Inkqueen
by Snuffbox
Summary: Based on romance hinted at in Inkdeath. Violante is finally the undisputed Queen of Lombrica, but the end seems nigh - war with Argenta looms. She must fix a heart broken by the Bluejay, whilst also leading her people to victory and securing Argenta's throne and unquenchable power for herself. But in order to do so she must enlist the help of the Black Prince. Violante/Black Prince
1. Chapter 1

**Inkqueen**

"The Adderhead is dead!" Those four words were all it took for the citizens of Lombrica and Argenta to erupt into riotous joy.

Violante's subjects.

They called her Her Kindliness, and looked up at her with adoration. No longer would the streets run with blood, or children lie dying in the mines, or corpses swing from gallows. It was said that even the Inkweaver had broken his pledge to banish words from his heart forever, and was to set his pen to parchment once more to sing her praises.

Ah, the Inkweaver. His name was interwoven with pain now; it was he who had conjured those fine songs about the Bluejay that had so ensnared her heart. Violante, the cold, ugly princess, whose heart had never beat for anyone, was felled by that one word.

The Strolling Players were bursting with revelry as she made her way down to the Motley Camp, in her plain dark cloak. She was greeted with a reverence and respect that she had never before earned from the gang of robbers, whose fires she had sat at for years. Perhaps the renegades who would bow to no man, would bend their knee to a woman now.

"My lady," the Black Prince took her hand with a smile in his eyes and pressed his lips against it. Then she was surrounded by well-wishers, women curtsying, men bending in obeisance, and all their face split in beaming smiles. Someone placed a wreath of flowers crookedly on her head.

And then the Bluejay stepped forward into the firelight.

He had a smile that lit up his face to the very smile-lines that crinkled at his eyes. Her breath hitched in her throat, and she was suddenly painfully aware of how she must look to him – a child playing at Queen, her cheeks flushed, flowers tumbling down her hair, and her simple cape worn and nondescript. And then his wife, his _wife, _the word made Violante want to spit, moved towards her, and curtsied, bowing her pretty blond head. "We are all so happy for you, your Majesty."

At once, Violante's joy curdled to roiling hate that burnt like acid, and blackened her heart with impotent rage. This woman was an ink-blot on the creamy pages of Violante's story. The blemish that could not be scraped off the parchment of her life. The final impediment to her Happy Ending, the stain on her Once Upon a Time.

Tonight, Violante decided, that would end. And back into her heart rushed Violante the Adderhead's daughter, with all his cold steel, his merciless resolve, his ruthless cruelty, his brutality he wielded like a sword to achieve his own ends. Tonight Violante would summon up his dark strength. Even though he was deep in the cold earth of a pauper's grave, and good riddance too, it was his blood that still flowed through her veins.

"You shouldn't make your intentions quite so obvious." The Black Prince was at her shoulder, and his breath tickled her ear. Violante dug her nails into her hand to stop herself from jumping in surprise, and re-assumed her cold, impenetrable mask that she so prided herself on. She turned, unhurriedly, to prove a point – no one ruffles a Queen, least of all a dishevelled self-appointed bandit King - to face him. "Love. It's a little devil. It makes even the inscrutable of us, even you, my lady, like an open book."

"Do not presume to read me, Prince," Violante rebuked him sharply, "Or else you will find yourself on the receiving end of my sharp tongue or even worse, sharper whips, for your insolence." She was harsher than she had intended, but his arrogance irritated her. She narrowed her eyes in what she hoped was a menacing way.

The Black Prince's expression turned stony and hard. "Then I should warn you, my Queen, that the Bluejay is a friend of mine. A very good friend. And his family I have under my protection, and I regard them as my own. And so if anything should happen to them," he paused meaningfully, "You would have yourself an enemy."

Violante balked at his audacity, and felt fury well up inside her once again. "And I warn you, my _Prince, _that I do not take kindly to threats. Do not forget I am your Sovereign now, and you would have _yourself _a mighty foe indeed if you dared to cross me." She hissed in retaliation. Then she whirled away from him, her lips pinched and her head held high. She felt a surge of triumph at winning this war of words, and her face softened into a regal smile as the children of the Motley Players clamoured at her admiringly as she swept out of the camp.

Oh, she knew what the Black Prince was insinuating, and he was right. And despite all his bravado, he wouldn't be able to stop her. Violante liked him, very much, she had sat by his fireside with him for years, but if his life had to be sacrificed, then so be it. Tonight the lovely Teresa would have her comeuppance. Tonight Violante would _finally_ secure her happiness. Her father would have scorned her for this, for her soft heart, and her mother's penchant for robbers and vagabonds. But this was her father's lust for blood, his desire to sink cold iron into a beating heart.

Tonight she would kill the Bluejay's wife.


	2. Chapter 2

Violante chose to wield the knife herself. She didn't have to. She could have had her pick of the finest assassins in Lombrica. She could have enlisted any of her guards, who had pledged their soul to her service, as the only person in the kingdom that could command their loyalties over their fascination with the Bluejay. But she chose to do it herself. If she was to wreak vengeance – for vengeance it was, she assured herself – it was she who must steep her hands in her quarry's blood.

It was not difficult to navigate the labyrinth of winding streets to the Bluejay's house. Violante had informers lurking in every doorway, and there was little she did not know about her people. They said his wife had longed for the shelter of a roof over her pretty head, and enslaved by love, the Bluejay had happily complied, even though the only canopy he needed at night was the stars. Under midnight's black cloak, she slipped unaccosted through the door.

She made her careful way up the wooden stairs. Moonlight spilled into the room where his daughter – Meggie, was it? – was curled up on her straw mattress, her friend, the Strongman's brother lying on a mattress next to hers like a faithful hound, their hands clasped together. Their blatant affection turned Violante's stomach sour, reminding her painfully of why she was here, and the love of which she was deprived.

When she rounded the corner into the Bluejay's chamber, she had to press her lips together to suppress the scream of hurt at seeing them asleep in each other arms. Her heart beat rapidly as her shadow fell across Teresa. She was a fingertips length away from the Bluejay's wife, the woman who stole the bookbinder's heart.

Her hands were steady as she drew the knife. With his wife silenced in the cold ground, who else would the Bluejay turn to for solace other than Violante? She would nurse his broken heart, stroke his troubled brow. Violante was not a great believer in Fate, but she knew that this had been scribed on the pages of destiny.

She raised the knife, and brought it down swiftly on the Bluejay's wife.

At once, someone seized Violante from behind. The tip of the blade barely grazed the woman's chest, and her assailant clamped a hand over her mouth before she could scream. Another arm snaked around her midriff and she was wrestled silently out of the room into the corridor, and slammed against the wall. She sunk her teeth into the hand, and it was whipped away from her mouth with a yelp. She came face to face with her attacker.

"You!" she breathed, outraged, at the Black Prince. He had secured one arm with his own knife pressed against her neck, his other hand clutching her shoulder, pinning her against the wall. Her knife was on the floor. "You have _ruined _my chance of vengeance!" she spat bitterly.

"You wouldn't have done it anyway," he hedged, in a whisper. He was panting, and his eyes had a feral gleam she had only seen when he was killing her father's men. He gestured to the grotesque, Violante thought, swollen half moon of Teresa's stomach that Violante had tried so hard to ignore. "She's nine months, if Roxane is to be believed. Only a monster would take the soul of the unborn child when the mother treasures it so much. And although you may be delusional, and cruel, and lovesick, I don't believe you're capable of such evil." His eyes bored into her.

"Don't you?" Violante whispered back acidly, challenging him to think the worst of her. "Two souls for the price of one. Or two birds with one stone, so to speak."

She watched with a masochistic sort of fascination as hatred kindled in his eyes. "The only reason I'm sparing your life is because our people deserve a leader who is not a tyrant, although God knows they don't deserve a murderess and a madwoman such as you! After all they've suffered, they're hungry for kindness and justice, and so you better step up to the mark!" He spat the words out menacingly, and Violante didn't doubt he was threatening her.

Suddenly a flurry of wings shattered the tense atmosphere, and the Prince's expression changed to fear. "Every night Resa changes form to a swift. Unless you want to be caught red-handed, I suggest you go now! Go!" He grabbed her by the scruff of her cloak and shoved her roughly through the nearest window. She fell hard onto the cobbles below, dazed. The Prince landed nimbly beside her. She heard the Bluejay's yell. He must have woken and found the knife she had left on the floor. At once the street exploded into life as the sleeping watchmen sprang from their stupor and brandished their swords.

"What are you doing? Move!" the Prince hissed furiously, seeing her lying on the ground, stunned. With a growl of frustration, he slung his arm around her, and half dragged, half carried her back to the castle.

He deposited her unceremoniously on the doorstep, and she scrambled to her feet. He turned to leave, and she called after him desperately, "Wait, Prince!" He stopped for a moment. He didn't reply, but gave her a long, measuring look. The disappointment in his gaze scalded her like a flame, and she hated herself for it.

Before she could say anything more, he melted into the darkness.

With the dawn came the memories of the night before, and they seared Violante's mind like the sunlight that streamed into her room as Brianna ripped her curtains open. Rage flooded through her at the opportunity lost, and her stomach churned with bitterness. But her tangle of murderous feelings was laced with curiosity. Why did the man who swore to kill her if she threatened the lives of those he held dear, help her make her escape?

As she attempted to dispense justice to the laypeople of Ombra – a particularly foul smelling tanner was adamant the butcher's boy had stolen one of his wares – she could barely concentrate. It was then that the sound of a growing calamity outside the throne room caught her attention, and the doors burst open.

A man trailing blood from hideous wounds staggered across the room and collapsed at her feet. Her bore the arms of an envoy of Lombrica on his tunic, and out of his shaking outstretched hand a small, round, bloodied object rolled. Violante picked it up, and her heart, trembling, plummeted.

It was golden mocker, an arrow through its breast. Dead.

Her father's sign. A message from Argenta's new queen. The meaning was clear.

The chamber was echoing with screams and sobs, and Violante's maids swarmed around the messenger. "Get a healer! Someone get a physician!" Violante's voice sounded shrill with panic in her ears.

"Your majesty," choked the young man, the movement causing his injuries to ooze more blood. He grasped her hand, and she put her ear to his mouth. "War," he whispered, and she heard his chest rattle with the hiss of his dying breath.

"The Queen of Argenta has declared she will wage war on Lombrica, until the ground..." he gasped like a fish beached on land, "...until the ground runs with blood.

"My Queen, we are at war."


	3. Chapter 3

Violante had always detested her step-mother, who was barely seen a few summers than she had. The sallow creature that had slunk onto her mother's throne and her father's bed. Queen Rosaline. Did she really think Violante, all of people, would be shaken by a dead bird? It had taken two hours to scrub the bloodstains from the dying messenger out of the flagstones, but Violante was not ruffled. What woman, who had watched a man choking on the gallows at the tender age of eight in the suffocating presence of her father, could be cowed so easily?

She drew herself up, and steeled her nerves. Her subjects milled about around her and the stink of terror and despair pervaded the atmosphere. She stepped onto the stone platform at the heart of Ombra, and thrust out her chin defiantly, as if daring fear to do its worst to her. She clenched her hands together so no one could see how much they were trembling.

"Citizens of Lombrica," the crowd fell into tense silence. "My loyal subjects. The rumours you have heard are true. Argenta has declared war on us. But we will not shirk from this threat. Do you really doubt our strength, after we brought about the fall of the Adderhead? I call on you, my people, to take up arms, so we can silence our enemy for once and for all! For every drop of blood they will shed, we will shed twice as much! I swear to you, with your support, I will bleed our foes into early graves, and watch their Queen perish in the dust!" Violante's heart was beating hard at the thought of her adversary crumpling into the dirt, but her subjects looked pinched and pale.

"War is not slaughter, nor loss. It is glory!" Violante heard the conviction in her voice, and willed her people to share her certainty. "The lives spent on the battlefield are not wasted, but sacrificed in triumph! I know you are weary from my husband's war, and our conquest over the Adderhead. But I will not admit defeat, or see this kingdom scurry away in the face of the threat when we can fight. Which is why I call women too, to fight for our kingdom."

At once the crowd erupted into consternation. Violante shouted determinedly over them. "Our menfolk are few since these past battles, who else can staff our armies? Should we women not too have a share in winning glory? I am your Queen, and you have never doubted my power. This will be a war between Queens, not Kings. This a new age, and one which intend to see women treated as the equal of men!"

Violante gave a small smile of satisfaction to see them sufficiently riled. "Will you fight with me, people of Lombrica?" Her subjects gave a reciprocal roar, a mixture of joy, fury and bloodthirsty eagerness.

"Craft me words, Inkweaver," Violante ordered in imperious tones, as she swept through the clamouring crowds back to the castle, her guards pushing a path through the scrum for her. "Words to get their blood singing. Tell them of the feats of the Bluejay and the Black Prince and Cosimo. Inspire them. But make sure you seal their loyalty."

"Very good, my Lady," her tortoise-faced poet bowed hastily.

* * *

"I didn't expect to see you again so soon."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures."

Violante had not expected either to be staring into the dark eyes of the Black Prince once again, and in such a short time.

She took a deep breath. "I want you as my commander. To rally my troops and instruct me in warfare."

He didn't bother to hide his surprise. "And why, I wonder, would you choose me? You have nobles at your dispense, your own General, numerous advisers. Why do you treasure so much the opinion of a simple ruffian?"

"Because," replied Violante, choosing her words carefully, "it is to you who truly has the allegiance of the hearts of the people. And because you have proven yourself to be... a man of good faith and moral character," she said meaningfully, thinking of his hand wrenching the knife from her grasp.

"And what if I were to say no?"

"Then I would say, choose your words carefully, or there will be consequences. You do realise, Black Prince, that this is not a request but an order."

He laughed, derision written all over his handsome face, and the sound made Violante's blood boil. "Your punishments have longed ceased to hold any fear for me."

"Are you such a fool to think that I would simply have you whipped? No, I mean to punish those you love the most: your Bear, your friend the Fire Dancer, if you do not comply. Wasn't it you who said that love made us all weak?" Why was it that whenever they spoke they were locked in a battle of wills? As if he were her equal, as if he had the power to challenge her!

The Prince's bear gave a menacing rumble, and his owner's voice was dangerously quiet. "I don't think you are any position to make threats, my lady." How dare he blackmail her! But despite her anger, fear began to leech into her resolve. "I serve no master. When I was a boy, when I was publicly beaten and humiliated by your father's noblemen, I swore I would live to be a free man. The Motley Folk do not abide by any laws. You may be Queen, my Lady, but I refuse to be your lackey. I think will take my leave now."

Violante, with a jolt of terror, realised she no longer had the upper hand. "Wait!" she scrambled off her throne, desperation beginning to mount. "I will give the Strolling Players protection," she called at his retreating back. He stopped.

"No laws protect them, but I can decree that the Motley Folk will be treated as equal, even honoured citizens, of the subjects of Lombrica. I can pass those laws to give your people the equal status they deserve. If one of the Strolling Players is killed or assaulted, if one of their women violated, their violator will be hanged like a dog. If you agree with my wishes." Violante felt a surge of triumph at her own cleverness.

He made no move to show he had heard her. Her desperation returned, laying its icy fingers on her heart, throttling her hope. "I implore you, Prince." Her pride splintered and cracked painfully. "I need your help."

Finally he turned around, and gave her that slow, sweet, mocking smile. "All you had to say was please."

* * *

"Try not to look so bored!" Violante hissed impatiently at her new Commander of War, who was sitting at her side, feeding his bear scraps under the table. Her nobles had greeted her announcement with characteristic horror, but all their attempts to sway her had been in vain.

It was the Celebration Feast, held the night before a battle was due to commence, where Violante would ingratiate herself with her nobility and high-ranking military officials, the evening where they could dine in splendour before riding out to meet their deaths. However, the peasant lounging at her side would mar any hope of securing alliances amongst Ombra's high and mighty, most of whom were eying the Prince with undisguised revulsion.

"Would you care to dance, my lady?" Lord Redwald, her Advisor-in-Chief, was the only bold enough to approach her and extend his hand. She quivered at his audacity. Violante _never_ danced.

Before she could issue a curt refusal, the Prince laid a hand on her arm, with that antagonistic gleam dancing in his eyes. "Dance with me," he said, with a grin.

Violante stiffened, and but before she could slap him roundly around the face for his impertinence, she caught the look of outrage on her Advisor's face. Partly out of defiance towards her nobles, who were scrutinising her every move with hawk-eyed shrewdness, as if begging for any hint of scandal; but mainly to infuriate Redwald, she placed her hand in the Prince's. "Very well," she said grandly. Redwald looked as if he were about to burst a blood vessel, and the hall erupted into scandalised muttering, giving Violante a burst of satisfaction.

"I've never been so infernally bored in my whole life. Do you call this a celebration?" the Prince demanded, holding her formally at arm's length as they swayed stiffly to the harpsichord. "I could take you to a real celebration," he said mischievously.

How she had always detested the countless Celebration Feasts her father had held, forced to make small talk with thugs and fire-raisers whom she despised, surrounded by the opulent food laden onto the groaning tables, the glassy eyes of boar's head transfixing hers as Firefox accosted her, scoured into her memory. How she had longed to slip away out into Ombra's Market Square where the people of Lombrica revelled, carefree, as if they were not going to end their lives at another's sword point the very next day. Even now she was tempted.

She snorted scornfully. "You may wish to waste your time drinking away the night, but some of us must consider the welfare of the kingdom."

"So leave the entertaining to Redwald. Come with me. Don't pretend you enjoy all this... frigidity," he waved a hand at the nobles, who were still watching them with open disapproval. "Aren't you tired of power-play for the day?"

Violante dropped his hand and moved to sit back down.

"Wait. Please." The Prince took her arm, again, and she wrenched it free. He withdrew his hand hastily. "I want you to come with me. I implore you."

Violante turned, and gave him a wide smile. "All you had to do was say please."

* * *

Violante heard the uncharacteristic girlish laughter bubble from her lips as she and the Black Prince ran like fugitives down the corridors, the bear lolloping behind them. Just before they reached the door, she felt a small hand touch her on the midriff. She spun around guiltily.

"I'll tell on you if you don't take me with you." Jacopo clutched a leather toy horse to his chest, looking up at his mother with a mixture of spite and longing in his childish eyes.

Violante pursed her lips in fury. She wished she could shake his skinny shoulders, slap his little face! "Very well!" she snapped, grasping one cold little hand in hers. "But you will stay close to me, and return home when I tell you."

She avoided the Prince's incriminating gaze. Did he think her a bad mother? Why should she care? He had squandered his childhood, a bastard orphan, scrounging on the streets. He knew nothing, nothing at all about what it meant to have a family.

They entered the dusky streets of Ombra, and Violante pulled her hood up over her head. They made their way into the Market Square, and the noise and the colour hit her like a wave crashing over her head. Bodies were crushed together, and the smell of sweat, cheap perfume, woodsmoke and incense filled the air. She could see to her left the Fire Dancer conjuring fiery flower petals from the gathering darkness, and a slender figure above dancing across a tightrope, showering the crowds below with confetti. The cacophony of laughter, drunken slurs, and Motley fiddles was not so loud that Violante could not hear her own heart pounding in her chest with excitement.

The Prince smiled at her, and his handsome face was illuminated by the firelight. For the first time in a long while, Violante was able to return it with genuine warmth. Stalls were selling sticky cakes, mead, and meat turning on a spit that looked suspiciously like dog, but her stomach was too knotted to give her much of an appetite.

A man teetered up onto the pedestal she herself had stood on and delivered a speech that morning, and brandished his mead dramatically. "Tomorrow we die, but tonight, we make merry!" he slurred, and then toppled off the platform, and the crowd roared appreciatively.

The Prince took her hand – which was not at all proper, but she didn't let go – and led her to the heart of the square where everyone was dancing. "Dance with me," he said, but it was more a dare than a request.

"I never dance," Violante retorted stiffly, instinctively. Then she saw Jacopo, standing there watching the dancers, his small fists balled at his side, a little old man well before his time, and saw the longing in his eyes that he would never act on. She realised she was standing in exactly the same way.

"That was not what you said only half an hour ago." The Prince's eyes glinted.

"That was not out of any love of you, merely to prove to those who think they can exert their influence over me that I am not to be trifled with! It was one dance. I would not want you to get any ideas above your station." Violante's could not keep the haughtiness out of her tone.

The Prince brushed her remark aside, laughing. "You call that dancing? I can show what dancing really is!"

Seeing he was not going to relent, and as he was already pulling her closer, she said reluctantly, "Only tonight," hoping she was sufficiently conveying that this was not something to be repeated. She placed her hands awkwardly on his shoulders, and tried an approximation of a sway in time with the music.

"For God's sake, Violante!" The Prince looked at her disbelievingly, sounding torn between exasperation and amusement, and then yanked her closer to him, wrapping his arms around her waist. Violante jumped at the closeness. Their faces were almost touching. It was of course, extremely inappropriate, not to mention disrespectful.

"I think that most forward of you, sir!" She said, not sure whether she meant his arms around her waist, or his calling of her by her name, trying to adopt a teasing tone to lessen the sting of her criticism, laughing slightly with discomfort and indignation. Instead she sounded as if she were flirting with him, like a frivolous young girl, losing her head over a handsome charlatan. It was the first time he had ever addressed as 'Violante'. It was far, far too informal, but she couldn't suppress the thrill it sent up her spine.

"Forgive me," he said rakishly, giving her his crooked smile, and not sounding at all sorry. He spun her around and around, until they were in the centre of the dancers.

"So you _can_ dance," he said approvingly.

"I am a woman of many hidden talents, Black Prince," Violante conceded, as he spun her around again.

Her hood fell back, and hair came loose round her shoulders. "I must look like a common harlot, dancing like a peasant girl, my hair undone," Violante mused as the eyes of the surrounding faces lit with recognition.

"I'm not complaining," muttered the Prince, and snaked an arm around her waist. Violante, for once, didn't feel like disagreeing with him. She was flushed with the heat and happiness, and although she no doubt looked like a woman of the night seducing her hapless prey, she couldn't care less.

"Do you have a wife, Prince?" she blurted abruptly, suddenly stricken with a burning desire to know whether there was a woman lurking somewhere in Lombrica who held the key to his affections, something which had never occurred to her in all the years she had known him.

He failed smiled faintly. "It does not do to keep a wife when one lives the life of a bandit and a vagabond, my Lady," he said ruefully, "except in the case of the Bluejay of course."

All of a sudden he felt far too close to her, the heat too cloying, the raucous singing and soaring of the fiddle jarring to her ears. She pulled away from him, and at once, sensing the he had tripped up, he hastily tried to redeem himself.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her over to a mead stall. "Let's drink to your good health!"

Violante's lips thinned.

"How about some wine instead? That's more fitting for a Queen. It's no claret, but I thought you had the common touch..." He said teasingly.

"I never drink," Violante reproached him, all her inhibitions back in place. "A Lady never becomes intoxicated," she said stiffly. Even wine reminded her painfully of the rubies embedded in her father's pasty flesh, like tiny drops of scarlet blood, marks of his sin.

"I never thought that Violante, Queen of Lombrica and vanquisher of the Adderhead, couldn't stomach a single drink!"

He swigged from a bottle of mead, tossing the stall keeper a couple of coins. Violante heard the mockery in his voice and saw the challenge in his eyes, and cursed her infernal pride and stubbornness. He knew she wouldn't leave challenge unanswered. She snatched the bottle from his hand, glaring, and tipped it back. It burnt her throat, but she refused to put the bottle down until she had completely drained its contents. Resisting the urge to wretch, she threw the bottle carelessly over her shoulder. "I defy you to beat that!"

Then she threw her arms around him and pulled him back onto the makeshift dance floor. Everything was beginning to spin, and she giggled girlishly. She began to whirl faster and faster, and the people around her were clapping and cheering and wolf-whistling.

"Are you worried," she whispered loudly to the Prince, pressing her lips against his ear, "that people might think you're my... _lover_?"

He muttered back something about how on the contrary he would be flattered, but Violante laid a finger on his lips and laughed, throwing her head back. She felt as if she was burning from the inside, the mead warm in her stomach, and her head warmer and fuzzier still. She felt strangely... uninhibited.

She dimly registered the Black Prince chastising her gently about having too much to drink, but she pushed her hands through his long dark hair and ignored him. He tried to put his arms around her again, and she spun away, swaying – and collided with the Bluejay.

* * *

**Whew, that was a long chapter! I promise my next chapter will be much, much shorter! Please good people, if you have the time, please R&R, constructive criticism welcome. It would be much appreciated, thank you ****(smiley face). **


	4. Chapter 4

At once all the merry commotion seemed to die away. "Bluejay," whispered Violante, her lips numb, reeling slightly. All the dreadful memories came slinking back, the knife, the sleeping, pregnant woman, the Bluejay's yell of fury. The Black Prince's face was creased with worry, and a little voice protested somewhere deep in her consciousness that he should not have her arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders.

He had ruined everything. She didn't want to see the Bluejay here, not now, not with the Prince.

"Resa – my wife, has just had our baby son," the Bluejay said cautiously, but his face was glowing with joy.

"May I offer you my sincerest congratulations," Violante tried to smile through the tears that were welling up, squinting at the blanketed bundle in Resa's arms. "He is as beautiful as his mother." Relinquishing herself from the Prince's hold, she managed to blurt out, "Pray excuse me," before picking up the hem of her dress and pushing her way through the dancing multitudes.

Hot tears were spilling down her cheeks, and it was too loud, much too loud, the music jarring her eardrums, the world was spinning and tilting around her, nausea breaking over her in waves, bile stinging her throat. She elbowed her way to the fringes of the crowd, and vomited into the gutter. Her balance tilted once again, and she staggered and fell, the cobbles grazing her hands. How common she must look! How disgraceful! A Queen, acting in such a vulgar manner! The shame made her sob even more. She clawed her tangled mass of hair out of her face.

She dimly registered him sitting down next to her, the familiar outline of his silhouette. The heat rose to her face in humiliation, making her burn such a crimson colour that her birthmark blended into her skin. She feel the heat of his bear, smell it, right next to her. It poked its long snout into her ear, and she was so aggrieved she did not push it away, undoubtedly crawling with fleas though it was.

"A wise woman once told me..." the Prince's voice was laden with concern, and she couldn't bear it - "...that there is no shame in being in love." She didn't want his pity, his patronising pity; she loathed weakness, most of all in herself. She wanted to punish him for his audacity, for suggesting that she, like any other woman, was capable of breaking her heart over a man, again and again.

How different the Bluejay was from Cosimo! Cosimo with his fair hair and angelic beauty, as if his face was carved from the heavens, alight with bloodlust for the hunt, and love for the wrong woman. And then there was the Bluejay, with his dark moleskin hair, and his gentle bookbinder hands, that would rather be caressing the parchment of a book than sinking steel into the soft flesh of a man's stomach. But they had both stolen her stupid, foolish heart.

"Are those your words of comfort?" she sneered at the Prince, the scorn sharpening her words. "Fine words of little use!"

"Would you believe that Nettle told that to me, of all people?" The Prince twirled his knife through his fingers, her harsh words glancing off him harmlessly, like water off a duck's back.

"Nettle?" Violante asked incredulously, her curiosity momentarily easing her heartache. She had never believed the brusque moss-woman with her gnarled hands and suspicious little eyes capable of sentiment; but a rather had a heart of wood. It seemed as if the green shoots of love could take root in even the hardiest hearts.

"I could tell of you of another woman I know, who pretends she cannot love even her son, least of all another man."

His words reminded her woes, and she buried her face in her hands with an ungainly wail. Once again she was sobbing as if her heart of stone was shattering into splinters.

The Black Prince leant over and pulled her into his arms.

At once, Violante's mind screamed for release, and indignant rage was kindled within her. Never had a man been so familiar with her! He had no right! She could not tolerate such gross disrespect! Her tongue fumbled to call her guards, to rebuke him with profanities a Queen would never deign to use.

But something within her seemed to break, maybe her resolve, or her pride. She buried her face in his neck, and sobbed. She could smell him, that comforting musky scent of smoke and sweat and animal. She had only ever found comfort in the arms of her mother – a little girl with a livid birthmark on her cheek, cradled in her arms of a woman with a face of infinite sadness, locked in a castle of tapestries.

She finally detached herself from his arms, her tears left her like a dry, empty husk. She felt like the old, cracked books she had seen festering in the dust on Balbulus' shelves, as if she had been drained of ink. She hastily began to rearrange her hair, her hands trembling as she pinned it up and fiddled with her cloak, taking deep, shaky breaths.

"Forget knife-throwing, my ability to hold my down my drink was the real reason the Motley Folk chose me as my leader." The Black Prince gave her a conspiratorial wink. He produced a small flask from his cloak and handed it to her. "This will help with the nausea. Next time don't drink the whole bottle at once. Mead is the drink of the sturdy peasant, not a Queen."

"Why do you presume there will be next time?" Violante grimaced at the acrid, bitter taste of the remedy, but the sharpness helped to ground her spinning head.

She stood slowly, mustering her former dignity, and drawing the hood over her head. "I must take my leave of you now, Black Prince."

"You don't have to take leave of a pauper, my Lady," he said softly, standing up with her.

"You are royalty of a sort, Prince of Peasants." Violante gathered her cloak around her. "It goes without saying that I expect your absolute discretion about the night's activities." She was herself again, Violante, Queen of Lombrica. Cold, sober, commanding. She reassembled her mask, so much more effective than the Bluejay's facade of feathers, so much more deeply ingrained.

"You have my word, my Lady." He took a step forward, "I -"

"Don't offer to accompany me. Save me the trouble of having to refuse you."

He closed his mouth, and she turned to leave.

"Violante."

She turned back to him, trying to express with a single look how he could never, ever her call that again.

"Good night." He took her hand a pressed it against his lips, holding them there for a fraction of a second longer than he should.

"Good night, Black Prince." She walked away, rubbing at her hand, as if trying to scrub away the imprint of his lips, or preserve it, leaving him standing alone, in the dark.


	5. Chapter 5

The sunlight pierced Violante's aching head like a blade. Her eyes were bloodshot and peals of pain rang through her skull. Brianna proffered her a brimming teacup. Her mouth wobbled, as if trying not to laugh.

"Good morning, my Lady."

Violante disagreed.

"It's herbal tea. My mother always it recommends after too much mead."

Violante groaned, and closed her eyes as if that could erase the events of the previous night. She grimaced at the taste of the bitter tea, but it eased the throbbing. "Who saw me... disgrace myself last night?" she croaked finally.

Brianna cast her eyes down, and peered up at her through her eyelashes, filigree streaks of copper. "You're the gossip of the whole market this morning. You'd hardly know we were going to war tomorrow." Violante had no doubt that Brianna would have relished the attention had it been her in the arms of the Black Prince. She felt a surge of spite towards her pretty maid.

Violante shook herself. The after-effects of the mead had left her in a foul mood.

She stood on the battlements an hour later, her breath turning to wreaths of steam in the cold autumn air. Below, horses were being saddled, weapons were bristling, rations loaded into carts. The lilting tune of war songs floated in the air.

"My Lady?" The Black Prince's eyes lit up when she turned to face him. "You summoned me."

Violante took a deep breath, and didn't return the sweet smile that flashed across his face. "I do not normally conduct myself with such wild abandon, Black Prince. I want to make it clear that such behaviour will not be repeated, either on my part or on yours."

"As you wish, my Lady." Violante watched the smile slowly fade from his face and he assumed a carefully neutral expression. She felt a surprising pang of regret. If he was hurt he didn't show it. But this was how it had to be.

"I called you here because I need to learn how to fight. I too want the chance to spill my enemies' blood."

"Do you not think that perhaps you've left it rather late? My Lady, we go to war tomorrow!" the Prince was clearly torn between exasperation and shock.

"Well then," Violante gave him a challenging smile, daring him to back down, "You'd best get started then."

* * *

His mother and the Black Prince were in the courtyard. They didn't seem him watching them.

Jacopo _hated _the Black Prince. He had liked the Bluejay, he had wanted his mother to marry him. They would have all lived together in the Castle of Ombra, and the Bluejay would teach him to chop off the heads of all the bad men that threatened his mother and had made her cry with fear. She hated anyone seeing her cry, and she would slap Jacopo if he had seen her. He had wanted to comfort her. But he didn't know how.

Instead she wanted to smile at the Black Prince. She never smiled at Jacopo. She liked the Black Prince much more than him, and Brianna too. He didn't think she liked anyone else. She would even rather talk to Balbulus than him, and Balbulus had waved his book-knife at Jacopo and growled at him to be off; Jacopo would have him whipped.

The bear snuffled closer to Jacopo's hiding place. It had mean little eyes and wickedly sharp claws, and Jacopo gulped. When he was King, he would kill it and hang its pelt on the wall. The Milksop had told him that the bear was really a Night-Mare, and that it ate little boys like him for breakfast. Jacopo didn't believe him; the Milksop was a weak fool, as his mother always said, and now his head was rotting on a stick outside the Castle of the Night. Jacopo had seen it himself.

But he kept away from the bear. Just in case.

Jacopo just wanted the Black Prince to go away. He hated the way the Prince put his hands on his mother's waist, and his lips at her ear. He hated the way his hands covered hers as they drew back the arrow with the bowstring. He hated the way his mother turned round and smiled at the Prince when the arrow struck the centre of the target, and laughed. His mother never laughed.

Her birthmark had faded to the faintest of shadows on her cheek, and Jacopo thought she looked almost beautiful. He wanted to tell her that, but he never would. His mother hated flattery.

But what most Jacopo detested most of all about the Black Prince – Jacopo's thoughts turned back to the source of his anger once again – was that because of him, his mother had left him alone last night. All alone, in the marketplace. She had forgotten him. He had been scared, and he had nearly dropped his toy horse. He had had made to make his own way back to the castle, and the guards had been impertinent and at first they had refused to let him in. They had laughed at him and jostled him and called him the spoilt brat of a dead Prince, and Jacopo had smelt the beer on their breath.

He would have them punished. He would have them put on the rack, and stretched until they screamed and the skin ripped like damp parchment! He would go to war with Argenta at dawn tomorrow, and ride amongst the troops, even though his mother said he couldn't, even though he was only nine years old. He raised his small chin defiantly. He would hold a sword; he had ordered one of his mother's guards to show him how. He would slice off the heads of Argenta's soldiers, just like the Bluejay. Then everyone would cheer him then, and shout his name! He would show them all, and they'd all be sorry!

* * *

"You did well," the Black Prince's voice was warm with approval.

"Better than you," Violante answered, hanging up her bow on the weapons rack, and breaking the Prince's hold on her shoulders and waist, which he had kept there since they had begun practising. She gestured to the target peppered with her arrows.

"Ah, well, knife throwing is my forte," the Black Prince said quickly, leaning across her to pluck the arrows from the target. It was midday by now, and the sun was high in the sky, and they had been practising for hours. Many of the courtiers who were not going to battle, or were taking a break from preparations had increasingly gathered in a curious, giggling cluster to watch their training. Brianna lingered with a few of the other maids, and gave Violante that knowing smile whenever she looked over at her, which the Queen studiously tried to ignore.

"Oh I see," Violante measured him up rather smugly, "My lord, is it that you feel _threatened_? Quite right too, I do believe I won nearly every round." Her tone was definitely teasing now.

The Prince stiffened, and she knew his male pride wouldn't be able to take the mock insult. "On the contrary, my Lady," he replied, with a half smile. Slinging a casual arm around her waist, he drew his knife from his belt and swung it over her shoulder towards the target. It soared in a graceful arc, and landed on the bulls-eye, splitting her arrow that was lodged there clean in two. The crowd of courtiers burst into applause. The Prince whispered, his breath tickling her ear, "I think I won that round."

Violante discreetly pushed him away, flushing slightly. "I have much to prepare. Thank you for the training. You may go and refresh yourself, and then I need you to confirm our strategy with Redwald and Rousseau. I will meet you in the throne room at the fourth hour from midday, for final Council." Then she strode away followed by a gaggle of courtiers, leaving him looking perplexed.

Violante crawled into bed that night with her head pounding. She had spent the day organising the lay armies, squabbling with and doling out flattery to her troublesome nobility in equal measure, the latter not being something that came easily to her. She had spent hours poring over strategies and maps and battle routes, and she had commandeered the Inkweaver to pen her heralds rousing speeches by the hour. Her nobles deplored the Prince, which only made strategising meetings all the more difficult, but she found his presence more soothing than she would ever care to admit, and he was like a constant anchor of common sense.

When she finally closed her eyes, she found her sleep was not an easy one.

_The ground was sodden with blood. Broken bodies littered the scrubby, scarlet grass, and the sky was a filthy grey, writhing with plumes of dirty smoke. The smell of burning flesh, and decaying corpses pervaded the air. Crows wheeled up above, and hopped from bloated body to body, plucking out eyes, and flying off with their gory treasure. Ash rained softly down, as if they were the tears of the dead bodies that were slowly disintegrating on their funeral pyres. It was eerily quiet, but there was a wrenching undertone of sobbing, a quiet wailing that spoke only of utter despair. _

_There was no glory in this. The rivers were running scarlet, and there was no joy in seeing such a gruesome spectacle. If this was a victory, it was a bitter one. The standard lay trampled and tattered in the bloody mud, but it was so mangled it was impossible to tell whether it bore the arms of Argenta or Lombrica. This was nothing like the golden triumphs and war epics the Inkweaver and the court poets had painted with their grand words._

_She stumbled over the corpses, and tripped on an outstretched arm. The face was achingly familiar. The horror began to twist sharp and cold in her stomach. His dark eyes were staring, empty, up at the heavens, as if praying to a God that had forsaken them. Flies crawled over his once dusky skin, which had now taken on the pallor of the death. The White Women didn't trouble him. His soul had been spirited away by the Cold Man's servants long ago._

Violante woke up screaming.

The sun was peaking over the horizon, and to Violante it seemed as if the huge star had cut its own wrists and was soaking the sky with its blood. Everything seemed like a morbid portent of doom.

Her army assembled outside the gates of Ombra, and she was gratified to see how great the numbers were. Women were among the ranks, she noted with a swell of pride; but there were young girls and boys too, some barely over the age of fifteen. Although the recruiting age was seventeen, it seemed that even Lombrica's children were whipped up by the patriotic fervour spun by the web of the Inkweaver's fine words. Violante closed her eyes as the image from her nightmare of slaughtered children flitted, unbidden, into her mind's eye.

"You look very fetching in armour," a voice floated up from behind her.

Violante gave a start when she looked into the Black Prince's grinning face, so full of life, unlike his waxen counterpart in her dream.

But, she chastised herself firmly, it meant nothing. When she had woken screaming at night when she was little girl, plagued by the nightmares of the dead men who had been hanged outside her father's gates, their bloated hands and misty eyes reaching out for her in retribution, her mother had stroked back her hair. It was merely the fairies who were nesting above her bed, she had said. They had devilish tempers and were all too easy to offend, and were quick to whisper a night-time curse into the ear of any sleeper who had had the misfortune to get on the wrong side of them during daylight hours.

But there were no fairy nests above Violante's bed this time.

"If only I could say the same for you," Violante parried, in mock-apologetic tones.

"Your words are an arrow to my heart, my Lady," the Black Prince's eyes crinkled.

"Well then, I suppose I must provide some words of comfort lest your delicate sensibilities suffer too much and render you unable to fight. Truthfully you look like a handsome rogue and you'll have every foolish chit of a girl running after you," Violante snorted, and briskly saddled up her horse. Her groom lifted her up, and she sat poised regally, sword at her side.

"But I don't want every girl running after me," The Prince said in a low voice, and Violante clenched her teeth. He moved his horse closer to hers, and tried to hold her gaze, which she determinedly tried to evade. All of a sudden the grass became very appealing to look at. "Violante, for God's sake look at me!" Desperation bled into his tone. "You know who I want."

Violante's words were every inch the Queen: cold, commanding, superior, and she almost loathed herself for it. "You've chosen a fine time for a foolhardy declaration of love, Black Prince! You would do better to focus on spilling blood than on the affairs of the heart. Sentimentality on the battle field will you see in a quick grave."

Without another glance in his direction she jerked her horse harshly away from him, her hands twisting the reigns in agitation. She couldn't deny the warm feeling she felt when he had spoken, or the way she had inadvertently blushed; but worst of all was the sudden and overwhelming desire to lean over and kiss him. But she was also overwhelmed with cold fury. That he should expect her to return his affections, the Adderhead's daughter! When they were only in minutes about to journey to the battlefield, where so many would lose their lives! Of all the times to say such a thing, why _now_, she thought, frustrated. Had he no sense of propriety, no respect? How could she rile her troops into a bloodlust when she could barely collect her thoughts?

She had by now reached the head of the armoured mass. When she opened her mouth to speak, they fell silent. "My people, today we ride. I truly know that I could be not be more honoured to have such valiant souls fight alongside me. When this day is through," Violante spoke with mounting conviction, "I swear that Argenta shall be ours!"

* * *

Treachery. The air reeked of it. Perhaps it was her dream, or merely just an intuitive feeling, but somehow Violante knew that her opponent wore deception like a mask.

The two armies were due to meet at the Grove of Lost Souls, which straddled the Lombrica-Argenta border.

An eerie place, where shadows snuff out the weak light, and bones hang, clinking softly, from the branches; a place so named because sacrifices to the Gods were left there in times of hardship. The relics still hang there, for it is bad luck to remove them. Indeed, the villagers there say misfortune falls on anyone who disturbs the scared place.

Some of the bones that hang there are new.

A deathly hush fell over the bristling silver mass of Violante's soldiers as they entered the grove. She shivered and subconsciously made the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. Violante was not given to fancies and superstitions, but her spine crawled, and the horses shifted uneasily and their eyes rolled. It was an hour past midday, but the canopy of leaves above was so thick it could be almost be twilight.

With an increasing sense of unease she looked around for Queen Rosaline and her men. They were supposed to meet here, formally and civilly, before battle commenced.

"It's a trap!" yelled one of her nobles, suddenly, his eyes wide with fear, "Those underhand Argentan bastards, it's an ambush!"

Immediately from behind them, men burst from the trees. They were surrounded. There were not just soldiers, but bandits too. Argenta had unearthed every criminal, every sword wielding mercenary and had unleashed them like a swarming plague onto her sister kingdom.

Violante watched lives being violently extinguished around her as she fumbled franticly for her sword.

Just as fingers grasped the hilt, she was dragged off her horse, and slammed into a tree. She was too winded to cry out, and her knights were preoccupied with being slaughtered. For a moment she was struck with disbelief that she, Violante, Queen of Lombrica, would die in this way, like a dog in a gutter.

But she would have no one ever accuse her of dying a coward.

She straightened her back, and stretched out her neck to receive the blow, as the cold steel whistled through the air towards her throat.

* * *

**Got some big action planned for the next few chapters :P! Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favourited and followed me, it means a lot :)!**


	6. Chapter 6

The blade only slightly parted her skin before her assassin dropped his sword with a clatter. The eyes that locked onto hers, the last she'd ever thought see, twitched slightly, and a delicate crimson ribbon of blood crept its way out of his mouth. His eyes were a tawny green, quite beautiful, she thought, with a sort of deadened abandon. A sword point burst through his chest, and he crumpled sideways to reveal the man she knew would be panting there.

His bear was enthusiastically chewing his way through the opposition, a flailing limb dangling from his bloodstained mouth. Despite the debauchery around her, Violante could not repress a characteristic shudder.

"What, no smile for your rescuer?" The Prince pushed his bloodstained hair out of his eyes.

"Really, that was not necessary," Violante said curtly, unsheathing her sword, and fending off an attacker with an impatient slash at his legs.

"A word of gratitude wouldn't go amiss for the man who just saved your life," the Prince was beginning to sound irritated now, beheading an opponent swiftly and kicking their twitching body aside, maintaining eye contact throughout.

"Attempts at my life are thwarted every day," Violante assumed a bored tone of voice, "I never thank my rescuers. I am Queen, after all. I expect to be defended at all costs as a matter of course." She dropped him an almost sultry smile over her shoulder, as if she were not trembling like a little girl, stricken with fear, pleading inside for solace.

Her Captain of the Guard, Montmorency, fought his way through the thicket of bodies towards her, hustling her towards the fringes of the battle. Violante felt the cold, dead weight of the sword, and swung it with vigour she didn't know she possessed. She felt flesh give sickeningly, slicing through skin as if were the soft flesh of the fruit she peeled with her silver knives. She cut through bodies like dead wood, corpses hitting the ground like fallen oaks. One man writhed on the ground, screaming. She had sliced the blade instinctively through his eyes, and she stumbled in blind horror. An attacker took advantage of her moment of weakness, and she felt the burn of metal through skin as his blade lanced across her side. Hot blood spilled over chainmail, and she howled in agony. Her guard moved too slowly to deflect the blow, but with a neat flick of his sword as her opponent lifted his weapon to send her to the grave severed his head from his body.

"My Lady!" a leather clad glove extended from above her, and grasping her wrist firmly, hauled her up into the safety of a tree, where ranks of Lombrica's archers had retreated and were picking off the foe. She scanned the crowd, and her eyes settled on the man she was searching desperately for with more concern than she ever would care to admit.

He was bleeding profusely from a leg wound, and he threw knives in quick succession, thudding into the backs of his targets with deadly precision. He felled man after man. But he left his back exposed, and she could only watch helplessly as a mercenary bearing the blood-spattered Argenta insignia advanced on him, lifting his sword. She cried out his name, but it sounded reedy and thin to her own ears, and was drowned out in the din. Impulsively she knocked an arrow in place and let it fly, spearing his attacker through the eye. The man screamed and dropped his sword. The Prince spun around, and stabbed him through the chest. He looked up, and spied her, bow in hand. His eyes locked on hers, and she smiled tensely.

A debt repaid.

Montmorency cut his way through the forest of flashing bloodied iron towards her, his face strained and fraught.

"My Lady, we must retreat! They caught us by surprise, and to continue fighting would be in vain! They far outnumber us!" His voice trembled and broke. "We are being slaughtered."

"Give the signal," Violante nodded tersely and tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

The sound of the horn being blown resounded through the grove, and within the minute Violante was swept up in the tidal wave of red and gold as they thundered amidst the screams and sobs and war cries out of the grove. The Argentan forces pursued them hollering wildly through bared teeth and savagely cutting down the wounded stragglers, but they fell back once they crossed the border to Lombrica.

As Violante surveyed the bloodstained, tear-streaked faces, clutching weapons with shaking hands, she felt utterly desolate.

All was lost.

* * *

"She has us like a rat cornered by hunting dogs!" Violante snarled, pacing the Council of War pavilion with acidic rage.

Violante had always been so clever. So clever, and cold, and calculating. Why had her cool reason deserted her?

She was not so clever now.

Outwitted by a simple ambush. Because she had been naive enough trust the word of that snake who had wrapped her coils around Argenta's – _Violante's _rightful throne. Violante never trusted anyone. She knew too well the weakness that lurked in every human heart, the avarice, the deceit, the lust for power. Soon the little viper would extend her venomous grasp to Lombrica.

Violante's fist curled around her the hilt of sword, the crest of Lombrica emblazoned upon it.

She could not let that come to pass.

Guards pulled open the cloth doors of the tent and two figures clad in green and silver were pulled roughly inside. "My Lady, your Lordships," the guard gave Violante a small bow and nodded at her Council of War, "Argenta has come bearing a message."

The two men were forced onto their knees. Their faces were bleeding and swollen, and Violante, with a surge of bitter gladness, guessed that her guards had not been gentle with them. The first bore the mark of a herald, and the other was presumably his guard. They had both been disarmed; clearly he was doing a poor job of it.

The herald extracted a scroll from his tattered cloak. "My mistress, Queen Rosaline of Argenta, sends her most heartfelt regret upon hearing that the Lombrican forces were ambushed this afternoon, and gives her word that she played no part in this most unfortunate of events. Given the circumstances, Her Ladyship has graciously extended her mercy. In order to avoid the mass bloodshed and heartbreak that would ensue from continuing in war, Her Ladyship proposes that tomorrow at midday in the Fields of Aries, Argenta and Lombrica select a single champion to fight to the death in mortal combat. The victorious kingdom will take the Crowns of both and Argentan and Lombrica; the defeated party will submit willingly to alien rule."

Violante listened to the viper's lies, masked in pretty words, smooth as snakeskin and just as transient. Queen Rosaline's overly cordial tone and condescending concessions of 'leniency' only served to rile her with all the more cold anger and loathing.

"Tell your Queen that I accept her proposal," Violante's voice was calm and steady, and did not betray the undercurrent of hatred beneath. With one swift, fluid movement she unsheathed her sword, and brought it down upon the herald's defenceless compatriot's neck. Her Council of War was white with silent shock as she picked up the severed head by the hair with her gloved hand, and thrust it into the shaking herald's hands. "But you may also tell your _Queen,_" Violante spat the words out as if they were stones, "that if Argenta ever seeks to break her word to her sister Lombrica again, when we next cross swords, I will ensure that not one of Argenta's soldiers will leave with his head intact with his shoulders. Let this" she gestured to the bloody, pathetic object, "be a warning to her."

The young man's face crumpled and tears spilled over his pallid face. "He was my brother," he whispered, staring, horror stricken at his gruesome cargo.

Violante grabbed him round the neck, fingers bruising his throat, sorrow bubbling up to sharpen her fury. "As were the people your mercenaries butchered in the mud today. Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons! So many! Your precious queen did not show her mercy then!" She thrust him backwards, breathing hard, her heart fluttering franticly against her ribs as if it was the ghost of the Golden Mocker Rosaline had sent her as a declaration of war.

"Get out!" she enunciated each word meticulously, her cold, steely resolve replacing her helpless rage.

Sobbing, the herald scrambled out of the pavilion.

There was a long silence as her Council of War regarded her. They had never seen her like this. Indeed Violante had never felt like this before. She rarely let her temper so completely overcome her, never dealt such a gratuitous blow in such cold blood, let alone with own her hands.

But she was not the same as before. She had thought it was not possible for her heart, already so blackened like ink with a life of being so unloved, of seeing of such calculated cruelties, to become even bleaker and harder. But she had never seen so many killed, heard their helpless cries.

Yes, she was different now.

Redwald finally plucked up the courage to speak, shattering the silence. "So we will keep our word then? Do you have anyone in mind for a champion? If Your Ladyship would be disposed to take recommendations, I can think of several men suited to the job." A few of the other Councillors nodded eagerly.

Violante looked at their pinched faces and anxious expressions with utter contempt. How stupid they all were, with their hope, and their foolish concepts of honour.

So, so stupid.

"Of course we will not keep our word!" Violante's voice was scathing. "Deceit must be fought with deceit! We will have our champion, but if he falls, we will not just submit! Our army must be ready to attack if he is defeated. Nor do I doubt that Argenta will keep their promise if our soldier is the victor, so all the more the reason to ready our troops."

"Very well, My Lady." Her commander-in-chief nodded his assent, "I will inform the army, and see that the wounded are being treated."

Violante longed suddenly for air, and hurried out of the cloying, frayed atmosphere of the tent.

The Black Prince had followed her outside. His footfall made no noise on the ground. She wondered if he would chide her for what she done to the herald. Such things seemed to tug at his soft heart. But he seemed to have thought better of it.

Nevertheless his face was sombre. "Violante," he said quietly. He took a steadying breath. "I want you to consider me as Lombrica's champion. The army respect me. They would respect your decision. I must be one of the most able fighters. Certainly I am an unparalleled knife-thrower." The side of his mouth lifted in a small half-hearted smile as he said these last words, but Violante did not smile back.

"No." She said instantly, "I forbid you!" She stared at him. Of course he would suggest himself. It would appeal to his ridiculous notions of martyrdom and nobility. She tried to give him reasons of the head, and ignore the pleadings of her heart. "For one, you are my Commander-in-War, I cannot spare you! Secondly, a good proportion of our forces consist of the Motley Folk, and in truth they look to you, not me, as leader. If you were lost, there would be a great risk in them losing heart in the campaign."

The Prince gave a pained laugh. "You know in terms of my station I am expendable. You have a wide circle of competent military advisors, far more suited to the position of Commander than I. As for the Strolling Players, as long as the Bluejay still has breath in his body, they will have courage. He is far better at playing the part life gave me than I am." He moved forward, and grasped her shoulder in an uncharacteristic gesture of fraternalism. His grip was firm, but his eyes were pleading. "Don't deny me this."

Violante looked away to try and conceal the solitary tear that slid unbidden down her cheek. She sniffed fiercely. Violante never cried. Weeping was for the weak and self-indulgent, neither of which Violante was.

The Black Prince put a finger under her chin, and turned her face to his. He moved closer and pressed his forehead to hers. Their noses touched, and Violante closed her eyes with a shuddering sigh. She cupped his face with her hand, and he held it there, lacing his fingers through hers.

"Please. I would rather see any other man as champion. Let someone else fill the place." She wanted her voice to be strong, but somehow her throat had closed up, and she found she could little more than whisper. "I beg you."

But Violante knew that she had already lost this battle of wills.

* * *

The air was wintry, and the breaths of the hundreds that peopled the armies turned to frosty wreaths in the cold. Winter had arrived.

The forlorn honk of the horn, the call to battle, echoed across the Fields of Aries. The two armies faced each other, ready to breach the empty gap between them, where the two champions faced each other.

Violante stood by the Black Prince. His bear growled anxiously at the front line, unable to understand why he could not join his master. The Strong Man restrained him, worry etched all over his face. Rosaline's commander stood behind Argenta's warrior, a hulk of a man. Of course the snake queen would not grace the lowly battlefield when she could commission others to do her dirty work. The commander gave Violante a small nod as he retreated, which she did not return. She gave the pair a haughty glare, her head raised in her familiar pose of arrogance and defiance. She pressed a hand over the Black Prince's heart. "I expect to see you after the battle."

In return he briefly covered his fingers with hers.

It wrenched at her to let go of him.

The two champions circled each other, shoulders tensed.

The soldier from Argenta was the first to strike.

His sword swung towards the Prince's neck, who swiftly countered it, their swords clashing. He spun his own sword over his head, and aimed it deftly towards the man's right leg. His opponent blocked it just in time, and parried his blow fiercely. The Prince twisted effortlessly to avoid another attack. Violante gave hiss of relief.

The midday burnt into the pale sky as they battled on, neither side giving. Ten minutes trickled by, and both parties had begun sweat. After another ten, their breath had become laboured, and their once gracefully deadly movements more slapdash. They were both making simple mistakes, and often nearly lost their footing.

The Prince drew first blood.

He ducked, narrowly avoiding a wild slash from his adversary, and while the Argentan soldier swayed for balance, the Prince guided his sword into the unprotected torso of his opponent. A cheer rose from the Lombrican army, and Violante pressed her hand to her mouth with a surge of triumph. The Argentan soldier gave a roar of pain, and blood blossomed onto the rough green and silver cloth he was wearing. Neither were wearing armour or helmets – it was forbidden under the code of single combat.

Incensed, the man's sword movements became more frenzied. The Prince parried another blow he flung his way. But then his luck took a downturn. The Argentan stuck out his foot, and as the Prince moved in for another attack, he stumbled. The mercenary lunged forward, his eyes greedy and desperate, and ran his sword through the soft stomach of the Prince's profile.

Violante dimly registered the raw cheer of victory from the Argentan army, the screams from the Lombrican soldiers, and the anguished howl of his bear. Everything had slowed, as if the world was moving through pitch, and the noise buzzed in her ears like the angry chatter of fire-elves.

The sword tip was sticking out of the Black Prince's back.

The Argentan ripped his sword out the Prince, and he fell silently to his knees, blood trickling over his lips. He collapsed face-first into the dirt.

Violante could not control the scream of agony that ripped from her throat. Almost as one, the army of Lombrica unsheathed their weapons with a grating sound of metal on metal, and launched themselves, in a howling, terrifying multitude, on their enemy, sharp sword edges seeking flesh.

The stream of bodies engulfed the Black Prince. Violante drew her sword and hacked her way through the roiling mass. Swords glanced off her armour, and knew she was bleeding, but the pain would come later.

She saw his body through the tangle of limbs, and fought her way towards him. His bear stood over him, viciously disembowelling any Argentan who came too close.

It was, she realised numbly, as she gathered his broken body in her arms, her dream turning into reality. Those dark eyes were empty, and already the White Women were whispering in his ear.

She ran through the jostling sea of bodies. She would not have been able to survive the carnage of the battlefield, encumbered as she was with the Black Prince, and her sword useless at her side, without the bear lolloping beside her, making quick work of any Argentan mercenary who tried to hinder her.

It was as if she was detached from her body, as if Violante, not the Black Prince had been stolen away by the White Women to lie in their arms in their dead, colourless kingdom, so much more beautiful and lifeless than Violante's own.

She watched from above as the woman that was Violante screamed for help as she staggered into camp, and collapsed on the ground, her hands pressed to the Prince's wound to stop his bleeding.

She watched as Roxane and the moss women ran to their aid, watched as they prised him from her grip.

Later, Redwald, his fine armour soaked with scarlet, came and told her that Argenta's army had retreated, with far greater numbers of dead than their own, a resounding victory.

Violante looked him listlessly. Won the battle, not the war. This would only be over when one of the Queens and their respective son and heir were dead. Only then would the bloodshed end.

She sat beside the Prince's body, his breath rattling in his body, with the White Women clustering around him, pale, insubstantial leeches, and wanted nothing more in that moment to see him smile again.

* * *

**Note: Have changed rating to T for violence. Hoped you enjoyed this chapter :)****! **


	7. Chapter 7

"Well, is it fatal?" Violante demanded, worry making her brusque.

Roxane poured water carefully over the wound, gently pushing Violante aside. The Black Prince twitched and groaned, half-conscious. His eyelids fluttered with pain. The wound was deep and hideous, oozing blood. She could see the gleam of his innards. Violante felt sick.

Roxane began to clean the injury, her brow furrowed. "I can't say," she said finally. "All I can do is heal the external wound, and provide the herbs to stave off the infection. But if it's gone deeper – if he has sustained internal bleeding – there's very little that I or the moss women can do."

Violante knotted her hands anxiously. In most cases, gold would buy anything. Love, loyalty, security, death. But even if she showered Roxane with all the money in Lombrica she would not be heal the Black Prince any faster than Death itself allowed.

"But I can tell you this," Roxane was saying, in her soft, musical voice, "the Black Prince has seen worse injuries, and he's been at Death's door many a time. Truly the White Women must love him. I've not seen a man defy death so many times, apart from one..." Roxane was talking about her husband now of course. But Violante had no patience to hear about the Fire Dancer at this moment in time.

The Black Prince had been housed in a Brownie cave, where he lay, tossing and turning on a makeshift stretcher of heather. It was evening, and outside the war songs of celebration and weary laughter drifted across the campfires of the citizens of Lombrica, still jubilant from their victory a few hours before. The Motley Folk, in contrast, had descended into a sort of quasi-mourning.

The cave was full to the seams. Roxane and a moss woman busied themselves over the Black Prince, his bear sitting at the Prince's head, growling anxiously. A group of the Prince's most trusted men hovered anxiously, talking in lowered voices. A gaggle of young Motley women kept up a constant stream of nervous sobbing (women flocked to the Black Prince, Violante noted, with a flicker of annoyance), and the Strong Man, whom Violante had never seen stray too far from his beloved master's side, sat twisting his hands, tears of worry trickling silently down his cheeks.

The White Women were drawn to him like pale moths to a dwindling flame. Their pale hands caressed the Prince, and they laid their cold fingers on his fingers on his heart. Their voices sounded like the rustle of turning pages, and Violante longed for the comfort of her books back in Ombra. She longed to envelope herself in another in another world, to lose herself in the whirl of words and ink, and stroke Balbulas's delicate illuminations. They were even more beautiful now illustrated with his left hand than they had been with his right. She had almost begged Balbulas to let her take just a few books with her, but of course he forbade it. The mud and blood and filth of the battlefield were no place for books, he had said.

"What are the White Women saying?" Violante asked Roxane, her inquisitiveness overcoming her. Their voices were barely raised above whispers, and if they knew the Black Prince's real name – for what mother calls her child Black Prince at birth? – they weren't willing to divulge it.

"Only his bear knows his real name," said Roxane with a tired smile at Violante, "And Dustfinger of course." Violante had heard endless tales about the Fire Dancer and the Black Prince, and if rumour was to be believed, they had friends since their orphan boyhood together, two little street urchins.

Hadn't she once called him a peasant or urchin once, as a sharp-tongued insult? Violante pushed back the Black Prince's long hair from his feverish forehead. She wouldn't do that now.

The White Women had increased in number now. Their whispers grew more insistent, and the Black Prince had begun to twitch and shudder feverishly. The Cold Man's angels had come to steal their prey away. "It's getting worse," Roxane murmured anxiously. "His fever is making no sign of breaking." She didn't meet Violante's eyes.

The White Women bent and whispered in his ears, and he turned his head weakly towards them. "His heart is slowing!" Fear bled into Roxane's voice like a leech. His face seemed thin and fragile in the flickering firelight, beaded with sweat and lined with pain, his eyes half-closed. But underneath the suffering, Violante thought she could detect longing, longing for Death's willowy agents to spirit him away. Violante felt a sudden spark of anger and frustration surge within her. How dare he give up! How dare he abandon everything!

"His heart!" whispered Roxane.

With a growl of unladylike exasperation and fury, Violante eschewed decorum and brought her clenched fist hard on his chest, with such force that his body twitched off the ground, and he gave a grunt of pain. She felt his heart resume beating lethargically underneath her heart. "Fine, give up! Concede!" Violante heard herself snarl, "I would expect nothing less of you! A fool, and a common peasant boy! The Gods only know what I was thinking when I appointed you Commander! To think, you waste away here, a sorry coward, turning your back on the people who need you most because of a mere scratch! You would let the White Women whisk you away? What man of steel shrinks from pain? Death is more of a battleground than where you were standing today, sword in hand, and I'll be damned if I see you accept defeat! You are a weakling after all, aren't you, Black Prince? You disgust me!"

The cave had fallen silent. The weeping women stared at her in open consternation, no doubt appalled by her show of anger. Sympathy was never Violante's strong point. The Strong Man had stopped crying, his mouth hanging open in shock. Roxane stared at her, sponge poised in hand. The Fire Dancer merely looked faintly amused, one eyebrow raised. Violante had not noticed him come in, embroiled in her railing at the Black Prince.

"I forbid you to die!" Violante declared in haughty tones. "You may think yourself above the law, Black Prince, but not even Death can defy the Queen of Lombrica, and certainly not you!" It was as if her father spoke through her, her arrogant father who had lied to himself just as she spun lies to herself now, and to the man dying in front of her. He had believed he could cheat death. What a fool he had been.

But it felt so good to lie. They spun off her tongue as naturally as truths, and for all the world she almost believed them, that she could pluck him from the arms of the White Women. How much easier it had been to lie to herself, to lie about it all. To pretend, all those years in the Castle of the Lake, that it was her windowless haven; to lie to herself about Cosimo, that he was a good man; to lie herself that the men and women and children who had died in front of her in the war she had waged, didn't suffer in pain and ignominy. _No one can cheat Death, Violante, _her mother had told her before she had lain her life on the executioner's block. _In the end he comes for us all. _Butmaybe that, too, had been a lie.

The White Women had stopped whispering. They gazed at her with those cold, cold eyes, and Violante stared Death in the face defiantly.

But inside she trembled.

"The White Women," Roxane whispered, breaking the silence. "They're leaving."

She was right. The White Women began to peal their hands off the Black Prince, dispersing slowly into the air.

The gathering fell into tense smile of relief. Some people embraced. Violante felt her breath hitch. "We should all leave now. There's no need to crowd him," Roxane was saying, in a tone that brokered no argument. For the more stubborn of the well-wishers, the hostile glares of the Moss Woman behind her were enough to persuade them.

"Come, Lazaro, Doria needs you," Roxane said in a gentle voice to the Strong Man, who was insisting on staying, his face striped with tear tracks.

"Of course, Doria," the Strong Man's brow creased fretfully, "I can't believe I didn't think about him at a time like this!" He was shaking his head, berating himself.

Only the Bear and the Fire Dancer remained. Roxane seemed to take it for granted that Violante had resolved to move from the Black Prince's side. "You must keep the fire stoked throughout the night. Sleep lightly, if he stirs, give him water and some of this tincture. If his bandages unravel, you must tighten them. If he gets worse, or his bandages need changing, you must wake me or one of the Moss Women at once." Violante nodded.

Dustfinger laid his hand gently on Roxane's arm as she motioned for them to go. "I want to stay with him a while." He said quietly.

"You will come to bed later?" Roxane whispered back.

"Of course."

They didn't kiss, but Dustfinger looked at Roxane as if her name had been written on his heart in flames. They looked at each other the way the Bluejay and his wife did, the way Cosimo and Brianna had, as if no mortal or magic in Lombrica could keep them apart. It was said that since the Fire Dancer had come back from the dead he had not spent a night away from Roxane's side. Violante felt her heart stir with envy. She could not find that love for her in any of her beloved books. She could not find it hidden amongst their pages, or inscribed in the ornate curls of the words. Power, what Violante cherished and yearned for most of all, would not bring her what she saw in the gaze of lovers.

Violante realised she had been staring. She turned her back, resuming her vigil between the Black Prince and the fireside, and she laid her blankets on the ground next to him. How her father would have sneered! For what Queen beds down next to a common man? _You're just like your mother after all, _she could almost hear him deride her, _with your weak woman's heart! Your pathetic soft spot for minstrels and vagabonds. I always thought my daughter had my heart, a man's heart, the cold, steel heart of the Adder. How wrong I have been._

When she sat up to put more wood on the fire, she saw the Fire Dancer watching her. He sat in the corner of the cave, half of his face veiled in shadow. "Allow me, My Lady." He snapped his fingers, and the flames danced into life.

Violante flinched back, barely perceptibly.

He was regarding her with that strange, antagonising half-smile on his scarred face. It was not an expression that she liked, or trusted. It was not a look that spoke of respect. It was as if he regarded everything with an air of faint amusement, as if nothing was not worthy of his contempt. He leant back against the rough wall, and a fiery wreath of flames lovingly licked his slender fingers.

"The songs they sing about the Bluejay are fine, aren't they?"

Violante stiffened.

"But not nearly as lovely as the ones they sang about your late husband. Cosimo the Fair. Cosimo the Avenging Angel. Cosimo the Beautiful." He looked at with that expression in his eyes. "And then of course there is the Black Prince. The noble robber, with skin as dark as dusk and a heart as pure and white as snow. Never without his shadow, his bear, his faithful companion, always by his side." The Fire Dancer was beginning to etch something into the cave wall. "Tell me, for I would really like to know," this time there was no doubt about the hard challenging, scornful edge to his voice, "Do you give your heart to a man simply because he has been sung about in the Inkweaver's glorious songs? I have seen how you looked at Cosimo when he didn't want you, and then the Bluejay. And now the Black Prince. He may play the gallant robber, but I can assure you his heart is as brittle as a glass man's. He is my friend, and I would sooner see every last child, man, woman, and fairy, languish under Argenta's rule, than see you hurt him. It seems to me that you give your love as carelessly and frequently as your soldiers toss stale bread to Ombra's beggars."

Violante rose, and without a word, slapped him across the face. Her nails left crimson streaks down his cheek.

How she loathed him for his impertinence! How she wished him to burn to death, writhing in his own flames! He could not have insulted her more if he had denounced her as a common whore.

"Leave!" She spat, as if the word was laden with adder's venom.

"Very well." The Fire Dancer stood up, and bowed, a deep, mocking bow. Those blue eyes seemed to be taunting her. Violante's stomach curdled with rage. "My Lady."

His retreating back revealed what he inscribed on the wall.

A heart, drawn in soot.

Furiously, Violante rushed over and scrubbed it out, not caring that the ornate braiding on her sleeve was blackening as she did so.

Simmering with anger, she wrapped herself in her blankets. She glanced over at the Black Prince. His bandages were unsoiled, and his breathing was easy. His eyelashes were dark and delicate against his skin.

Painstakingly slowly, she uncurled her arm from her side, and stretched it towards his face. He was turned towards her. His long black hair brushed against his cheekbones. For a fleeting moment, she longed to cup his face in her hands. Her fingertips almost brushed his skin.

"_Do you give your heart to a man simply because he has been sung about in the Inkweaver's glorious songs?"_

Violante's hand snapped back. Pulling her blanket tightly over her, she rolled over and turned her back on him.

She was Violante, Queen of Lombrica, daughter of the Adderhead.

She was not weak. She did not need love, the fool's fantasy.

She closed her eyes.

* * *

Violante's eyes snapped open. There was nothing out of ordinary, and yet something had woken her. The fire was burning low, the cave walls blushing a rosy red. Outside the sky was still dark. Frowning sleepily, she sat up slowly, piling more wood onto the wood. The Prince was still asleep, and the bear's paws twitched in his dreams.

Suddenly, something snuffled from the shadows.

Violante's heart raced in fear, and she fumbled for her dagger. She dropped it with a clatter when she saw the creature that lumbered out of the dark.

It hissed and narrowed its yellow eyes at the sound. Violante almost laughed out loud in relief. It was no Night Mare or Boggart or wolf or midnight assassin.

The Brownie was completely unlike its sleek cousin Tullio, its mossy brown fur matted, and its eyes feral. She remembered that they were lodged in a Brownie cave, and it was unlikely to be happy about its home's new inhabitants.

She stared it, entranced. She had often seen them embroidered on the tapestries in the Castle of the Lake, their strands of fur picked out with gold, lurking behind the beautiful embossed letters of Balbulus' illuminations. _Brownies can be hostile creatures_, her mother had told her, as a young Violante had run her fingers over one such illustration._ Brownie bites can make you seriously ill if they aren't treated properly. But they have a weakness for mushrooms, and they do say that if you ever happen to sight a Brownie whilst in a Brownie cave, it brings you good luck. (Although not if they bite you of course!)_

Violante edged towards the nearest wall, and prised a fistful of fungi from the wall, her nose wrinkling slightly in disgust. She very much prayed they weren't poisonous. She threw them towards the Brownie in what she hoped was a placatory gesture.

It regarded her suspiciously, and then seemed to change its mind, bounding forward, snaffling them up and running from the cave.

Had it brought her good luck, like her mother said, all those years ago?

She thought of her mother's fascination for all creatures, whether they were magical or not. She remembered once catching her mother bandaging the injured leg of a small white foal. Its eyes had been large and dark, and underneath its silvery mane there was a small stub growing. Her mother had held her finger to her lips. _Don't tell your father. _How long before that beautiful, ethereal creature would become quarry to her father and his fire-raising lords and their baying hounds, the scene of its death adorning the Castle's tapestries, its forlorn head nailed to the wall, and its green blood inking the pages of the books that festered tragically in the library, rotting from the damp? Unicorn blood made exquisite ink.

Was it foolish to hope that the Brownie was a message from her mother, who still thought of her daughter in the White Women's castle of bones, so far away?

Yes. Very foolish.

"My Lady? I heard a noise. Is the Prince alright?"

It was the Bluejay.

Her heart lurched, and then she registered his words. He had come to check on the Black Prince, his friend. Not her. Of course.

"Oh, yes, yes!" Violante clasped her hands to her chest, as if trying to still the fluttering of her heart. "I dropped my dagger. Just an altercation with a Brownie. The Prince is fine."

"Did it bite you?" He looked concerned.

"Oh! No, no..."

"Then then you have good luck then, if the stories are true." He smiled, and Violante couldn't help but smile helplessly back. "And the Prince too. Don't worry, My Lady, he will recover. He's seen worse than this."

"So everyone keeps saying."

"Fenoglio leaves out that part in all his fine war elegies, doesn't he?" The Bluejay passed a hand tiredly over his face. "All the dying, and the suffering. They sing about the Black Prince as if he's invincible. He would make an excellent hero in a fairytale, don't you think?" Here the Bluejay permitted himself a little smile. "You know, when I was younger, when my favourite characters died in a book, I used to cry. I used to hurl the book against a wall."

Violante couldn't imagine doing that. Sad endings, those were the ones she liked. With tears, and tragedy, and suffering. She didn't believe in happy endings.

"And you think the Prince still has a long story ahead of him?" She was inquisitive, but instead her words came out as those of a little girl seeking reassurance.

"Yes. Yes I do. If you'll forgive me, My Lady, my wife and children will be wondering where I am..."

_Stay with me_, she wanted to plead, _don't go back to your family. Stay with me. _But instead she said, "Of course."

She thought about the way his eyes had lit up when he had talked about books. How he must miss them. A robber must have few chances to lay his hands on them.

Books. Of course. The way to a bookbinder's heart.

"Wait," she said quickly, "Just before you go, I want you to know you are welcome at Ombra Castle to tend to our books any time you wish. Or at the Castle of Night, when I claim it. There is always need for a bookbinder."

"Thank you, My Lady." The Bluejay bowed his head, "I intend to take you up on that offer." She thought he would too.

She lay back down next to the Black Prince, fatigue eating at her. She thought of the Bluejay's light brown eyes, and the Black Prince's darker ones. The Bluejay believed in happy endings. But Violante didn't.

* * *

The Black Prince's coughing woke her in the morning. She gave a cry, and Roxane came running, tailed by the Fire Dancer, and several other Motley Players, rubbing sleep from their eyes.

"Water," he croaked, and Violante raised the waterskin to his lips. The bear pushed his long snout into the Prince's ear, grunting happily, and the Prince pushed him away feebly, laughing weakly.

Roxane bent over his bandages, and the Fire Dancer clasped his friend's hand. "We thought we'd lost you from the land of the living."

"Oh I doubt that. Her Ladyship would never have let you go," Roxane gave a mischievous smile reminiscent of her daughter's, "Not by the sound of her shouting and ranting last night."

"I know. I heard. It was hard not to." The Black Prince gave a good humoured wince. Violante had the grace to look abashed.

Violante touched the Prince's fresh bandages. Not really aware of what she was doing, her finger traced up the line of the wound of his stomach onto his chest. "It will leave a scar." She said quietly.

"I daresay."

His eyes met hers, and he held her gaze. He took her hand, and wove his fingers through hers, pressing them lightly to his chest.

Roxane and the Fire Dancer tactfully got up and left.

"The White Women must miss you."

"What good fortune it is they didn't take with them then and there. It must be that Brownie. It brought me good luck." He flashed her his roguish smile.

"So you heard everything?"

"Everything." He let go of her hand, and leaning on the bear, pulled himself up. "You still love him, don't you?" He looked at as if he very much hoped he was wrong.

"If you weren't an invalid, I would have had you whipped for that." Violante tried to sound teasing, but her words came out all flat and wrong.

No. The Black Prince was wrong. Yes, she felt something for the Bluejay. Cared for him, maybe. But he was the bookbinder now, not the robber, and it was the robber she had given her heart to. No, she didn't love the Bluejay.

The Black Prince reached out, and briefly cupped her cheek in his hand, brushing his thumb over her birthmark. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you." He dropped his hand, and struggled to stand up, putting his arm around the bear's broad shoulders for balance, wincing in pain.

"I'll need some practice before I go into battle again. But I warrant I'll be fit to do soon within a couple of days. It will take more than a scratch to hold me back."

"What are you talking about?" Violante stared at him aghast, "You can't go into battle! You can barely stand! I absolutely forbid you to fight until you are properly healed, and that will take a month at least!"

The Prince opened his mouth to protest but she spoke over him, "No. There will be no more fighting. No more bloodshed."

"You mean Lombrica will retreat? You'll give up your kingdom to Argenta?"

"Of course not! Don't be such a fool! There are other ways to win a battle. If I am to take Lombrica, I must use another strategy. This war is between two Queens, and not our people."

Violante was resolved. There would be no more battles. There would be no assassin in the night. She would go herself, with no soldiers, and no protectors, with only her sword and her wits, to the Castle of Night.

She would kill the Queen of Argenta and her baby son herself.

* * *

**Wow, that was a long chapter! Sorry, that was quite a quiet chapter, but I promise big action for Chapter 8! There might be a long gap between this chapter and the next though, as I have A-Levels to prepare for. Once again, thank you so much to all you guys who are R&Ring! :)**


	8. Chapter 8

Violante stared into the bowl of water that served as the Queen's mirror. Her face looked strange with her birthmark covered in powder. So long she had railed against the dark stain that had marred her face, how she had longed to be beautiful Brianna with her fiery hair and her flawless skin.

But now her face was pale, and meek, and plain without it. After all who was Her Ugliness without her ugliness? Just a scared little girl. Perhaps they would call her passing fair without it. But power was far more to be desired than beauty, and beauty never came with true power.

Violante tugged at the ragged peasant robes, tied up her mousy hair like a farmer's wife. She took her sword out of her ornate sheath, and slid it into a plain one, and tied the strip of material bearing Lombrica's colour on it, the way peasantry showed their fealty. She would switch it to Argenta's colours when she crossed the border.

Once upon a time this would have more than amused her. It would have been she wanted, the chance to be the little minstrel girl, singing for the Motley Folk. It was her mother in her, the side that always entertained the thought of running away, free from her father, free from the chains of nobility and all its cruelty and death.

She pulled the cloak tighter around her, and caught sight of the bloodstains around the hem. Her new apparel had been taken from the corpses of her dead soldiers. It jolted Violante back to reality. This was no time for idle fantasy, the people whose clothes she was wearing had died for her and her war. It was a good disguise; no one would know Her Kindliness through this.

Her double stood staring at her. Violante had given her enough silver to feed the girl's family for months. She had sponged on the replica of her birthmark with red dye, but the girl was so timid, Violante could scarcely believe anyone would be fooled. "Remember my instructions. Let no one in. Tell them you will hear no counsel, and to defer the Black Prince. You are grievously ill, and will only see a common physician. You should be able to bribe them into silence with the money I gave you." The girl nodded. She was clearly terrified. How spineless she was! "And remember, under no circumstances are you allowed to admit the Black Prince into these quarters."

How easy it was, Violante mused, to be a common peasant woman. They paid no obeisance to her as she swept past. She had no more presence than if she were a shadow. She was not hindered when she left the camp. Just another common woman, going to mourn at the burial grounds, or fetch cooking water from the stream. Not a Queen, journeying in disguise to the Castle of Night, to kill a baby king and his mother.

It was all so easy. What fools they all were!

Too easy.

The camp was barely fifty paces when the knife thudded into the nearest tree trunk, narrowly missing her head. A knife that was thrown by a left-hander. It was sharp, its blade slightly curved on both sides. A book knife. She knew the crest embossed on it so well, and even the better the hand that held it. How often she had watched, enthralled, as it sliced meticulously through bindings and parchment.

"Balbulas. Your aim with your left hand is even worse than it was with your right."

She turned to the one-handed figure standing behind her. She almost wanted to tell she had missed him, and his beady eyes that looked right through her, his sharp tongue, and his thin, calloused, rapacious fingers – fewer of them now - either reaching for her gold and silver, or masters of his art, producing illuminations so beautiful she wished she could breathe life into them.

"Your Ugliness," Balbulas bowed deeply. "I feared you might do something stupid, as soon as I heard there were no further battle movements." His eyes flicked critically over her powdered face and peasant robes. "I see I was right! Where are you going?"

"To kill a king."

"And what, you were planning to march up to the Castle of Night in broad daylight, and kill him with the sharpness of your words and wits!" Balbulas looked not only contemptuous, but also disappointed. "This is a fool's errand! Damn your weak womanish heart, it'll be the death of you! Where is the clever Violante, who prized reason above foolish sentiment? Think with your head, woman, not with your heart!"

"With my head?" Violante's snapped back indignantly, "I have seen people die screaming on that battlefield! I have watched them burn, slashed with swords! This is more than just the blackened corpses at my father's castle! I have watched men burn and hang from the gallows before, but not like this! I have seen children felled like deadwood! I watched a mercenary cut off a woman's nose and ears before they ran her through! I may be the Adder's daughter, but I am not without compassion!" She began to pace frantically, her fingers working at the crest on her sword hilt. "Sometimes even the head can be conquered by the heart, Balbulas! Last night I fought the White Women for a man I – for a good man! I prised their pale fingers from his beating heart!"

"Ah, the Black Prince." Balbulas' eyes flared with antagonism. "Yes, you were always smitten with him, the dashing mountebank, the Black Hand of Justice. One of my finest illuminations. The Inkweaver's poems never do him justice the way my illustrations do. Just recently you commissioned me to compile a book of illuminations of our former favourite robber, trimmed with Bluejay feathers. You've been careless with your heart again, Your Ugliness, there are whispers about it all over Ombra. Should I be making a book for the Black Prince instead now, Her Kindliness and her peasant lover illustrated side by side in azure and onyx?"

"Why are you saying these things to provoke me?" Violante snarled, "Can't you see this is no time for it!"

"I say it because it's the truth. Careful, Your Ugliness, you make the Black prince your weakness, and your enemies will exploit that mercilessly."

Violante glared at him fiercely. Her eyes, normally so grey and full of light, her mother's eyes, were now her father's, steely with cold fury.

"You're angry? Good!" Balbulas had never been impressed by her anger, and the more bloodthirsty her threats, the more derisive he would become. "Think! None of the Adder's enemies have ever reached Argenta's silver castle alive without magic. How did the Bluejay kill your father? With words, words and witchery! You would strike clever deals, and spin your clever lies, but with whom can you make those bargains with now?"

Balbulas, Violante realised, with a slow sinking realisation, was right. He was always right about her. He knew her better than anyone. He told her the truth whenever no one else would, the ugly, painful truth, with a tongue as sharp and brutal as his book knives. She would have meted out punishments of unthinkable severity to anyone else who might dare to see through her so clearly and voice their opinions with such impertinence.

"Haven't I always said they should call you Your Craftiness? You're a fox among chickens, Violante."

Balbulas spoke the truth. She had let her heart overtake her cool reason, riddled with grief and weariness as it was. Violante had always despised such weakness in others, and now she too was ailing. Lies, deceit, trickery, cleverness and cunning, that was how Violante played, and how she won.

"Thank you," she said suddenly to the illuminator, and meant it. Violante never usually thanked anyone – it put you in their debt, and that weakened you. A Queen should never be in debt to anyone.

Then she turned abruptly and began to run. She with a sudden searing certainty what she had to do.

The cave was dank and grim, and lit with fire elves, trapped in grubby lanterns. They languished in their glass prisons, and although they railed and sparked, they would never be free to burn again outside of their tiny new coffins.

Of all the wondrous and terrifying creatures Violante had seen in her mother's tapestries, and read in her beloved books, goblins were hardly prepossessing. They were renowned for their low cunning intelligence, and often a haggling session would end with a covert knife in the back. They were the cutthroat traders of Lombrica's magical underworld.

"Ah, the ugly little girl graces us with her presence."

The goblin scuttled forward, its dark, greedy little eyes set in an impossibly ugly face, rubbing its talons with glee.

"I have come to bargain with you, goblin. I believe you might have something I need."

"Oh, we knows exactly what you need, little girl. Call it a shopkeeper's sixth sense." The goblin winked at her, and cackled to itself. Violante shuddered in revulsion.

Violante loathed and feared magic in equal measure. Sorcerers and witches, she wouldn't be unhappy to see them all burn at the stake. But the lands had been freed of her father by magic, and despite all her mistrust of it, Lombrica and Argenta lived and breathed it, and she would have to learn to tolerate it, to use it for her own ends.

The stone wall was lined with shelves of bottles and trinkets that winked and gleamed ominously. The creature clambered up stepladder, and retrieved a bottle. Violante peered suspiciously at the murky contents, setting her Four Eyes' glasses on her nose. Her eyes were large and luminous in the slender frames, and she looked like a small, curious girl.

"'Death's Counterfeit', we calls it. To all living eyes, you'll be as dead as a doornail!" The goblin gave another triumphant cackle. "You'll take on all the countenance of death, white as a shroud, and not a pulse nor a heartbeat to the touch! But you'll be awake all that time, and you'll feel and hear every little thing! It'll only last an hour, so mind how you use it, ugly girl."

It was perfect. Already she could feel a plan formulating. She would go to the Castle of Night, fake her own death. There was no time to go back to the camp to retrieve her royal clothes, but her birthmark would serve as well as any crown in identifying her. The Queen of Argenta would want to see her adversary's corpse with her own eyes, and why would she think a body with no heartbeat anything other than dead? And once Violate was inside the castle walls, the Silver Queen would be a spider ensnared in her own web.

"What price do you demand, goblin? I have gold, silver, I can promise you any of my personal riches." It was a lie – Balbulas had bled her dry of almost all her fortune for his books. But Violante was a very good liar.

"Gold? Silver?" The creature mocked, "We don't wants any of that tarnish and rot, no, no, no! No, ugly girl, you has the perfect price for us, perfect merchandise. You stink of it, like a trembling little child. Shall we tells you what it is?" The goblin leaned in close. "Fear," it hissed through its teeth, like broken shards of brown glass.

"You wish to take my fear?" Violante asked, incredulously, "That hardly seems a sacrifice. My father, for all his barbarity, was a weak, cowardly man. Every night he wept like a baby, quaking with fear of the White Women. He died in fear. Fear makes even the strongest of us weak." Her voice was black with hatred and disgust. "Take my fear, goblin, if that's your price."

A wicked giggle erupted from the creature's scaly throat, and it rocked back on its heels. "Ah, the ugly girl has no idea! What a fool she is! Without fear, we are reckless, ugly girl, and when we are reckless, we die. Your pretty husband died in just that way. No matter! The price is set!" The goblin sank its talons into her flesh. "All the things I can do with you, pretty fear! Do you know what it takes to summon a Night Mare, ugly girl? Fear is what it takes. We'll have ourselves our own tame Night Mare in no ti-"

"Enough prattle!" Violante snapped, "I've no time for this! Take it and be done with it!"

"Very well, very well..."

At once a blinding pain shot through Violante, as if her innards were being slowly torn out of her body with the red hot pokers her father's torturers so favoured.

"...And we'll send you on your way for good measure," she heard the foul creature say, before the pain overcame her and sent her tumbling into inky blackness.

* * *

Violante knew she was outside the Castle of Night by its smell. The odour of rotting flesh is not one you can ever forget, especially not when it has been with you since childhood. The corpses hung like broken, blackened songbirds in their rusty cages, their reflections distorted in the silvery walls. What pretty songs of dissidence had those prisoners sung to end up in Argenta's gallows?

Violante's mouth tasted of dry cotton, and she felt dizzy and disorientated. Magic. Curse it to the depths of hell.

The guards gave startled yells when they caught sight of her. Violante hastily wrenched open the bottle of Death's Counterfeit and drained its contents. Her heart was pounding, but not from fear. The goblin really had spoken the truth. She felt nothing, nothing but a heady recklessness, when the old Violante would have shivering with dread.

By the time they had reached her, swords drawn, she could already feel the draught taking effect. "If isn't Her Ugliness!" one of the guards crowed. Violante had no time to give a haughty reply. She had moments before Death's Counterfeit took hold of her fully and she had to fake her death for her plan to work. She drew her sword and launched herself at the nearest guard.

He instantly parried the blow, and she returned it, but with deliberate clumsiness. She tripped to the side, and grimaced at the prospect of the imminent pain, exposing her side. As expected, his blade bit into her flesh – a stomach wound, painful, but not fatal. But of course they wouldn't know that. She gave a yell of pain, and it was not hard to drop to the ground as if her legs were weakened.

"Tell your Queen she'll never take Ombra, even when the White Women come for me!" Violante spoke as if they were her last, defiant words. She fell back, as if caught in her death throes, and as she let her eyelids drop the potion overcame her.

If she had still been capable of fear, the potion's effects would have terrified her. She found she was unable to open her eyes, to twitch any muscle even slightly. Her body had become a leaden prison, although she hear and feel everything around her with perfect clarity, including the blazing pain in her side.

"She's dead!" One of the guards was yelling, "You've killed her, you damned oaf! The Silver Queen said only she's to take Her Ugliness's life herself! You're done for you are. She'll string you up for the crows to peck out your eyes."

"I'm a doomed man! Check her pulse, and her heartbeat! She might be faking it!"

Violante felt shaking hands desperately fumble at her wrist. "Nothing. No pulse. She's dead."

"Help me then! You can't just let the Silver Queen have my head because of this!"

"Help you, and swing on the gallows alongside? No, I'm not taking the wrap for this one. We'll bring the body to the Silver Queen. The bitch couldn't handle a sword, that's how she died, and she deserved it." Violante felt spit land on her face, and she longed to be able to wipe it off, and rip out the man's tongue for his revolting insolence!

"Come on lads, let's lift the body. Long live Argenta!"

Violante felt herself being unceremoniously heaved into the air by several pairs of hands, to cries of "Long live Argenta!" What contemptible fools they were, with their callous, low-born incompetence! How she would outsmart them all! When she sat on their silver throne, she would prescribe them such deaths to match her father's punishments!

As they hauled her through the castle's corridors, she was met with cry and shouts, the clattering of falling objects as servants dropped what they were holding, gasps, and in rare cases, sobs. But mostly she was met with, "Long live Argenta!", or "Gods preserve the Queen Rosaline!" and such words made her blood simmer with black rage. When she sat on the throne of Argenta, she would make the people love her.

And if they couldn't love her, then she would make them fear her.

She was slung onto the stone floor, and her limbs crumpled awkwardly beneath her, prompting Violante to wish fervently she had control over them again. Her side twinged in pain.

"Violante." The woman's voice was thin, reedy. Hardly impressive. Hardly the imperious, commanding tones of a Queen.

Rosaline sounded as breathless as a little girl presented with her first toy. Violante felt cold fingers at her wrist once more. "She's dead. She really is dead." The girl gave a strange, demented little laugh, and clapped her hands together with glee, then instantly stopped. "Which of you struck the blow?"

"He did, Your Highness." Violante heard one of the guard's stumbling steps. He must have been pushed forward. She heard the man whimper in assent.

Then came the peal of steel upon steel, as a sword was unsheathed, and the sheathed again in the man's heart. She heard the steady drip of blood onto the flagstones, and the hissing intake of breath from the other guards. "Leave us."

Rosaline's footfalls receded towards the other end of the room, and suddenly a piercing cry rent the air. So. Violante was in the Prince's bedchamber. She had been delivered straight into the viper's nest. Her luck could not have been greater.

Violante noticed that the potion's effects had begun to weaken. With a jolt of elation, she realised she could move her eyelids. Light began to filter through her eyelashes. Her muscles twitched in her fingers.

She found she could turn her head towards the other woman, and began to shake off the shadows of her sleepiness. Rosaline had her back to her, staring into her son's crib. Violante lifted her skirts clear of her feet. How she hated these clothes that men bundled women into! She would have so much more stealth in leggings.

But it was not difficult to creep up behind her opponent, step over the bloodied body of the guard, and slide the dagger she wore out of its sheath; after all, the White Women rarely returned their prey.

The boy was barely more than a baby, as it mewed in its cradle. It reminded her of Jacopo at that age, although she had seen little of him then. His mother's eyes widened with horror as Violante pressed the knife against the infant's throat. Immediately the boy stopped crying, as if it knew its life hung by a tenuous thread.

Rosaline's skin was sallow, and her eyes ringed with dark bruises of fatigue, her ashen hair lank. Her face spoke of infinite tiredness, of a life controlled, and bartered, and valued only as much as she bred, of grief and frustration long ago run dry. She was scarcely a year older than Violante. She may even be younger. But she had the haggardness of a woman of twenty years her senior.

"Send away your sentries. I know they're guarding the door. Send them away."

Rosaline stared at her uncomprehendingly, and then slowly called out to the guards. "Leave!" She looked at Violante with a hatred so fierce it was reminiscent of her late husband. "You're very clever, aren't you? With your clever little ruse. Like a little viper. I don't know how you did it."

How Rosaline's pale hands trembled! Violante couldn't remember what it felt like to be afraid.

"You're just like him, you know. Like your father. Greedy. Power hungry. Always wanting more. More, more, more!"

"I am the Adderhead's daughter!" How Violante loathed her father, and yet it was his blood that ran through her veins, his lust for power, his craftiness.

"You little snake! You couldn't win through honest means, could you? By foul means or fair, isn't that so? And always foul in your case!"

Violante snorted. "A snake? You call me a snake? And what do you fancy yourself as, a vixen defending her cub? I would say more a stoat."

"Well it may be that we stoats are known for protecting our young viciously to the death, but I never loved my son, any more than you love yours! Gods, how I hated bearing him!" Rosaline clawed at her stomach, as if she hoped to put her baby back in her womb. "Like your father, he caused me so much pain." The Silver Queen's teeth were bared, and her eyes were wide and wild.

Violante laughed, cruel, ugly Violante, "After all, what are you without your son, the source of your power? Just a little slattern, controlled by your weak, stupid brother, whose head I have now on a stick outside Ombra Castle. When I bring you there as my prisoner, you'll be able to be reunited with him at last. Perhaps I can find a matching stick for your head, and you can be by his side for a very long time." She did sound like her father! Violante, the Adderhead's daughter.

Rosaline drew a ragged breath. "If we are to fight – if you're holding your knife to my son's throat – then let's at least abandon the pretence. This fight was never about our children, about righteous mothers protecting their sons' inheritance. This is a battle between Queens. For my land and yours."

"_Your _land?" Violante couldn't help laughing with disbelief, "Very well, if we are speaking candidly to one another, Argenta is _my _land! I grew up in this castle, I watched men and women die within these walls! It was within these towers I was confined for my childhood, the books from this library that I pored over! Argenta is mine, mine by right, and the silver throne is mine! My father slighted me because of my sex, merely because I am a woman he saw it fitto deny to me what has always been mine! You declared this war, but who knows? Maybe I would have done so after too long if you hadn't. How can I ever be happy on the throne of Lombrica, knowing that someone else rules in my stead in Argenta?"

Now Violante's hands were shaking too. She looked over at her brother – no, she wouldn't think of him as her brother. Just another of her father's many progeny, just another pretender to the throne.

A sudden slyness entered Rosaline's face, and began to edge out the desperation. "You're going to kill my son, aren't you? I almost wouldn't mind, how I hate the brat! But there's something that you should see before you do, something that might just change your mind. I nearly forgot all about it!"

Rosaline moved slowly towards the curtain in the corner of the room.

Violante pressed her knife harder against the little boy's throat.

"You won't feel so clever know, once you see this! You see, Your Ugliness, I have outfoxed the fox."

She wrenched the curtain aside, and there he was. Gagged and bound and bruised. A silent guard had a knife pressed to his throat, just as Violante had to the Silver Queen's son.

The Black Prince.

* * *

**Disclaimer: The name 'Death's Counterfeit' is the Shakespearean name for sleep, I can't claim credit for making it up, though I wish I could! Shakespeare rules! I apologise for any spelling mistakes/missed words, I think there are quite a few this time around! Hope you enjoy this chapter :)**


	9. Chapter 9

"_Careful, Your Ugliness, you make the Black Prince your weakness, and your enemies will exploit that mercilessly."_

Balbulas' words rung, and died, in her ears. Of course he had been right.

But the warning had come too late.

Victory's quill had written triumph in every line on the page of the Silver Queen's gaunt face. Her eyes were alight with it.

Violante had always thought of her young stepmother as a waxen doll, or a marionette perhaps, a puppet queen, whose strings were pulled by her husband and her weak brother.

But the puppet had cut her strings; now it was Violante dancing her to her tune.

How wrong Violante had been about her. What had her father told her? "_He who has the most to lose is always the most dangerous."_

Both players in this game had far too much at stake.

"So what will it be? Your lover or your kingdoms? Which will you choose? Take Argenta, and my son's life, and I will have my guard spill your Black Prince's blood all over the floor. But if you surrender, put down your knife, and give up Lombrica, I will let your lover live. Take your pick, Queen of Hearts!" Rosaline smile was rabid.

She was mad, Violante realised. A madwoman. They were always the most dangerous of opponents. They were thoroughly unpredictable.

"That is a clever trick," Violante said impassively, calling up the cool mask that she wore so well. "How very like your late husband you are. My father would be impressed."

Rosaline bobbed her head graciously, imperiously acknowledging the backhanded praise.

"But I must make one correction. The Black Prince is not my lover."

At that, Rosaline laughed aloud. "You lying snake! Do you really think all the sordid rumours haven't reached my ears? Whispers are unhindered by guarded borders, word of mouth spreads like wildfire, and when the Queen of Lombrica beds a filthy peasant... my! It's quite a crowd pleaser of a story." Rosaline smiled indulgently, as if she were performing to a rapt audience.

"You know," here Rosaline leaned in conspiratorially, continuing, wide-eyed, "It took almost thirty men to subdue your pauper paramour. His bear ripped apart eighteen of my soldiers, and the peasant gutted the rest. Even then his filthy beast got away. Not so with his owner, I'm afraid." Rosaline give the Black Prince a kick. He gave a muffled yell through his gag, doubling over. "Whoops," Rosaline covered her mouth delicately in a mock bashful giggle, "I broke another rib."

The Prince straightened up painfully; as straight as he could, given that he had been forced onto his knees. His eyes locked with Violante's. She longed to run to him, rip off his gag, to sink her blade into his gaoler's neck. His eyes were swimming with pain, and a rarer emotion, one that she had rarely seem him wear, one that she could no longer feel.

Fear.

_"Your lover or your kingdoms? Which will you choose?"_ Rosaline's voice chanted in her head over and over again.

But it wasn't fear of Rosaline, or of her brutal guards, or even pain.

It was of Violante, and of what she would do.

She wanted to reassure him that he would be safe, that she would never choose to hurt him.

But the truth was, she couldn't.

Violante hadn't taken her knife away from the boy's throat, and the guard hadn't taken his from the Black Prince's.

Violante and Rosaline were two Queens, both poised to checkmate. After all, who needs Kings to win the game, when the real power lies with their mothers?

The black Queen or the white; who would triumph?

Perhaps the real question was, which queen was the black? For as Violante knew well enough, the villain always wins.

"Shall I tell you how I captured the Black Prince?" Rosaline was clearly burning to share her cleverness.

"I suspect you will whether I wish it or not, so by all means, enlighten me," Violante said dryly.

"Whatever you say, he clearly does love you." Rosaline launched eagerly into her narrative. "He insisted on seeing you when he heard you were 'ill', and he was quite distraught when he found dear Giuseppa there as your body double. Yes, you never did bother to find out her name, did you? Or anything about her at all, for that matter." Rosaline tutted, "Carelessness. What a shame such a little thing should be your undoing. Giuseppa was working for me of course. Such a sweet girl. Your men killed her father on the battlefield, and her eldest brother. She had two other brothers, and if I recall correctly, one of them was a guard of one of my heralds, whom you killed with your own bare hands. Family is a funny thing, isn't it? People never forget an injury to one of their own. Anyhow, she alerted my men, who were waiting, and here we are. I knew your robber would be just the perfect bargaining chip."

"What a fascinating story." Violante's voice was layered with sarcasm. "It's just so tragic that you've forgotten one crucial point."

"And what is that, pray tell?" Rosaline fought to keep the worry creeping into her expression.

Violante opened her mouth to reply, and to deal the fatal blow, but the doors burst open, a guard clutching a small, squirming figure.

"Mother?" squeaked Jacopo.

* * *

Jacopo squinted out of the window in his room in the highest tower of the Ombra Castle.

They had left him! All of them! They had gone off to war without him, in their gleaming amour and their red and gold standards.

They looked like silver beetles, crawling into the Wayless Woods. He wished he was a giant, like the ones he had seen in Balbulas' illuminations in his mother's books; he would crush them all with a huge foot. That would teach them to leave to war without their King.

His mother hadn't even said goodbye.

He wondered if he would ever see her again. People die all the time in wars.

That's why he had to stay here, Brianna said. To rule if his mother died. He was important, Brianna said; but Jacopo didn't need stupid Brianna to tell him that; he was King, of course he was important!

Brianna was boring. She was sad, or angry, he didn't care which. She was worried about her father, the Fire-Dancer, fighting. She was always crying now, or twisting her hair, or staring out of the window and sighing. She wouldn't read to him now, no matter how much he pulled her hair, or put pins in her bed. She was so selfish.

But Jacopo _would_ go to war. He would show them! They laughed at him, called him a brat prince, left him behind! But he would fight! He was much cleverer than any of them.

He left Brianna sighing in his room, and went to the vaults, where Brianna went and kissed the effigy of his dead father, as if that would bring him back from the dead. His father had died twice, but Brianna was stupid; didn't she know that dead men don't come back to life a third time?

His grandfather had told him that ghosts live down in the vaults with their cold corpses, and they like the sweet flesh of little boys to eat most of all. But Jacopo didn't believe him, because his grandfather had died and Jacopo had never seen _his_ ghost. His grandfather had been much more frightening alive.

Jacopo reached behind the tallest statue of his father (there were lots of statues of his father in the mausoleum), where its back had been hollowed into an alcove. His mother kept his father's sword there. She thought he didn't know, but Jacopo had had his spies follow her down there. If people knew that Cosimo's sword had been buried with his body, they would have been angry, as kings are supposed to be buried with all their weapons, because they're knights. But it didn't matter anyway, because his father couldn't have been a great knight, otherwise he wouldn't have been killed. His mother had slapped him when he had said that to her.

Jacopo looked at his toy horse. He wanted to take it with him, but he didn't. He put it down, slowly and deliberately, in the alcove in the back of his father's statue. He was a King, and a knight now. Kings didn't play with toys.

Jacopo drew the sword out of its alcove, and wrapped a cloth around it. Then he heaved it into a bag. He found one of Jehan's old cloaks and pulled the hood over his head. The castle guards barely a noticed a small peasant boy make his way out of the castle gates into the heart of Ombra. Around the city's outer wall, there was still a general bustle. The provisions carts had not all left, although the army itself had departed. It wasn't hard for Jacopo to sneak under the covering of one of the carts and curl up next to the mounds of food.

Jacopo hated being dressed like a peasant. He hated everything about peasants. They were smelly and ugly and dirty and rude, and Jacopo never understood why his mother cared so much that they were forced to work in mines in Argenta, or why she tried not to flinch when she saw nobles stringing up their serfs on the gallows.

He should be riding on horseback with his mother with all the soldiers, dressed in armour. When he was King, he would lead all of Lombrica, and Argenta too, into battle. He hated bumping around in this peasant's cart on the way to the battlefield, and he hated wearing Jehan's coarse cloak. He was sure it had fleas.

His mother made him play with Jehan, Brianna's brother. Jehan was stupid, like all peasants, and he smelt like sheep. And he was a liar too. He said that Violante paid him to let Jacopo win at chess. Jacopo could always tell a liar.

When the cart had finally reached the camp, Jacopo knew something was wrong. When he peeked out from under the cover, he saw that there were wounded people scattered all around on litters. They were groaning and screaming. Some were bleeding, some were sporting severed stumps of limbs, or had bloody holes where their eyes had been skewered from their heads. Jacopo felt sick. There had already been a battle, people were saying, and there was another one yet to come.

He had spent the night sleeping under the cart. He had nearly been caught several times. He was tired, because he could barely sleep, and hungry. All he had managed to scrounge was some bread, and some carrots. They still had earth on them. A King shouldn't have to live like this! He should be in the royal tent with his mother, on a feather bed with steaming food served to him. He wasn't a peasant! But if he went to his mother, she would never let him fight.

Jacopo was woken by the sound of marching feet. They were going to battle, and now, he, Jacopo, would fight too. He took his sword out of his bag, and jammed a helmet from a makeshift armoury on his head. He would chop off his enemies' limbs like branches from a tree. He would make them scream and writhe with pain! And then all of Lombrica's soldiers would see him, and praise him, and lift him on their shoulders, and chant his name.

Jacopo had to drag his sword. It was much heavier than it looked. But that didn't matter. He was still a prince.

He was swept onto the battlefield in a tidal wave of grubby, blood-stained, battle-hardened people.

Some roared with battle lust, and shook their swords defiantly. But mostly Jacopo was hit by the fear. The air reeked of it. Men, women, and adolescents, barely older than children, were ashen and trembling. Their crude armour was already dented. Tears made pale streaks in the dirt down their cheeks.

_Cowards_, Jacopo wanted to hiss, _I'm not scared,_ but that was a lie.

The two sides met in a screaming mass, and the butchery began. There was so much blood that Jacopo couldn't tell the green colours of Argenta from the red of Lombrica. He saw limbs being hacked off. Swords run through twitching bodies. Corpses sliced at again and again even though they were already prostrate on the ground. Eyes bloodshot and crazed. Fire blossomed up like carnivorous flowers, and its deadly petals encased vulnerable flesh, and melted bodies in their armour. Jacopo saw people screaming as they fell into the fire's burning embrace, and their skin sizzle and blacken sickeningly on their bones.

It was nothing like any of the poets' songs. The Inkweaver had lied. It had all been a trick! Jacopo would make him pay for this, he would cut out his tongue and cut off his hands! But then Jacopo thought about the blood, and the screaming, and he didn't want the Inkweaver to be tortured like that. He didn't want to think about death at all.

He was so afraid.

Jacopo ran. He was small, and thin, and agile, and swords were swung at his head, but he ducked fast, and kept running.

He hid under a cart, and closed his eyes, tight, so all the horrible things he had seen couldn't trouble him anymore. But they were still burnt onto his eyelids.

He clamped his hands over his ears so he couldn't hear the screaming, but the anguished, agonised noises wriggled through his shaking fingers into his ears like worms.

Jacopo never cried, but he did then. Big, noisy sobs. Crying was for the weak, his mother always said.

He wanted his toy horse.

He wanted his mother.

But there was no one who loved him, and no one who would save him. Even though he was the King.

Jacopo felt the despair rise up and choke him, like hands clasped around his throat. Silver clouded his vision, as if the serpent from Argenta's crest had slithered across his eyes, and his heart fluttered like the butterflies he so liked to tear the wings from. His head flopped down into the mud, and he ceased to feel anything.

Jacopo felt himself being dragged feet first out from under the cart. He was too weak to move, or to protest, and the light hurt when he tried to open his eyes, so he kept them closed. He didn't want to look at all the twisted corpses.

It was quiet now. Only the sound of low keening drifted forlornly on the wind, and the soft patter of boots on the ground punctured the air.

He felt himself being hauled up, and then swung onto something that gave a slight crunch when he landed on it. He almost cried out in disgust when he realised, as a revolting odour filled his noise, and he felt stiff hands against back, that he was on a cart of the dead. Not just any dead, though. He peered through his eyelashes at the bloodied silver and green colours.

He managed to bite back a squeal of horror when a corpse was thrown on top of him. But Jacopo was clever. He was cunning. All these bodies were going to be taken back to Argenta to be indentified and buried, maybe even up to the Castle of Night. Because that was where Jacopo was going. All he had to do is keep his eyes closed and pretend to be dead.

Jacopo wasn't a coward. Maybe he couldn't fight, but Kings weren't expected to fight anyway. Bravery wasn't all about the battlefield. No, Jacopo as much cleverer than that. He would go into the Castle of Night and take the baby king of Argenta all by himself. Wouldn't his mother be proud of him then, when he had taken the infant King of Argenta as his own hostage, and carried it all the way back to Ombra Castle? He, Jacopo, would win the war for Lombrica. Jacopo didn't need swords and armour to show that he was King.

The smell was disgusting, and Jacopo had to cover his mouth and nose with his cloak. He could barely breathe because so many bodies were on top of him. He wanted to be sick, but if made any sound the guards would know that he wasn't dead, and that he wasn't from Argenta, and cut off his head.

Jacopo knew when they had reached the Castle of Night because they started to peel the stinking corpses off him. He thrown roughly onto the ground, and waiting until their backs were turned, he picked himself up and ran towards the castle gates, his father's sword bouncing uncomfortably against his back.

He didn't make it very far.

"Hold it right there, little man," a guard sniggered and seized his arm, "Where are we running off to, then?"

Jacopo instinctively pulled hard out of his grip. He was the future King of Lombrica, no lowly guardsman had the right to touch him! The weight in his backpack unbalanced him and he fell backwards. The bag burst upon and the hilt slipped out, wrapped in cloth.

Jacopo gulped.

"Well, well, what goodies have we here?" said one of the guards.

"Don't mind us if we help ourselves. Let's help you out of that heavy backpack, shall we?" said another, pulling his load roughly from him.

A guard seized the hilt, and the cloak slid off the sword. The group of men sucked in the breath sharply as they saw the crest and the name embossed on the sheath. "Looky here, boys," one the guards gave ominous smile, "We've caught ourselves a king..."

Jacopo backed away hastily, "If you touch me, my mother will hear about this! She'll have you whipped until you bleed!" He protested shrilly.

"Sounds frightening, doesn't it, lads?" The guards snickered and raised their eyebrows at each other. "Tell you what, let's take you to her. From what we hear, she's having tea with the Silver Queen right at this very moment. Then we'll see about this whipping."

Jacopo was dragged biting and kicking through the shining corridors of the Castle of Night. He sank his teeth into the hand of one of his captors, drawing blood. "Little bastard!" The guard roared in pain, and Jacopo darted towards the nearest door. His pursuer hurled himself after him and grabbed him round the scruff of his neck. Jacopo clawed frantically at the arm that had rooted itself around his neck, like a thick, hairy, tree-trunk. The guard, intent now on squeezing the life out of his prey, rammed Jacopo against the nearest door. It burst open.

Jacopo stared.

"Mother?" He whimpered.

* * *

"Jacopo!"

Violante stared at her son furiously, shock reverberating through her. How she wanted to slap his shocked, pale little face! As if her situation weren't perilous enough, he had to come and increase the danger tenfold! He looked increasingly like his father, and how like him he was in temperament too, seeking out danger where none should be had, like a bloodhound did its quarry, the little fool! Why could he not stay at Ombra Castle, out of danger, out of mind?

"Put down my son, or I swear I'll slit this brat's throat right here and now!" snarled Violante in a voice so viciously authoritative that the guard instantly obeyed. Jacopo ran over to her. "Mother, what -"

"Silence, Jacopo!" Violante snapped tersely, and slapped his little face, hard. Her rings made red marks down his cheek. "I told you to stay at Ombra Castle!"

"Oh, _enough_!" Rosaline stamped her foot petulantly, and Violante's attention snapped back to her adversary. "I'm weary of this maternal display! You make your choice now, Your Ugliness. You kill my son, and you win a kingdom; but lose a lover. Spare my son, you lose two kingdoms; but save your lover. I will be generous, and count to ten. That should be time enough to put down your knife and surrender, and because motherhood has made me mellow," she flashed Violante a sardonic smile, "I will be merciful, and let you live, and your son too."

Violante looked at the Black Prince.

"One..."

What would he say, if he were not gagged? His eyes never left hers.

"Two..."

Would the Black Prince choose to lose his life, if it meant so many lives could be saved? An end to this war? It wasn't just about power, about winning Argenta. Killing the boy would mean an end to the war, to all the bloodshed. It would save thousands of lives, and bring worthiness to those lost. Would the Black Prince be willing to die for that?

"Three..."

Perhaps. After all, it would appeal to his sense of his martyrdom. The noble robber.

"Four..."

Win a kingdom, lose someone so dear to her. And yet, if she surrendered, and kept the Black Prince his life, she would lose Lombrica. Could any man be worth a kingdom?

"Five..."

He would hate it if she chose to take Argenta. Even when dying he would condemn the killing of a child more than his own murder. But it wasn't murder, Violante told herself firmly. All was fair in love and war. All was justified in the rightful quest for her throne.

"Six..."

Or she could surrender, put down her knife. She would be a prisoner, no doubt. But she would live, and so would he. Or would they? The Silver Queen was just as much as a snake as her husband, she lied, cheated. No promise was safe, no assurance of clemency.

"Seven..."

No. Violante was the Adderhead's daughter. She was the rightful Queen of Argenta. And she would never, never surrender.

"Eight..."

And that was when Violante realised. There was always only ever one choice. No man could ever rival that, nothing else could ever take that place in her heart.

She had one love, and that was power.

"Nine..."

"I told you, you forgot one crucial point." Violante said elusively, and smiled. She lifted the blade unhurriedly from the infant's throat, and slowly ran her finger down the blade, "You think I am ruled by my heart. You think that even ugly little Violante would give up her birthright for the love of a man." Violante walked steadily towards the Silver Queen, and stopped so close their noses were almost touching. She could see Rosaline's eyes tracing the birthmark that shadowed her cheek. "But I'll tell you in on a secret." Violante put her lips to the Silver Queen's ear.

"I am the Adderhead's daughter. I don't have a heart."

The blade rose in a perfect arc of silver.

Scarlet blossomed like a rose across Rosaline's snowy white chest.

The Silver Queen fell, and Violante caught her in her arms. They were locked as if in a lover's embrace.

The puppet's strings had been cut.

She heard the Black Prince struggle to his feet and tackle his guard to the ground. She heard Jacopo cry out. She didn't pay them any heed.

Violante pushed a strand of Rosaline's hair back from her face. "Carelessness. What a shame such a little thing should be your undoing. How words come back to haunt you, My Lady." She whispered. "You see, you just weren't clever enough. Yes, I couldn't kill your son, not without repercussions, but you never made any safeguards for your own life."

Rosaline's eyes were growing steadily glassier, and the crimson stain spread slowly across her torso.

Violante's eyes had never been sharp, but even through the blur, she tell that the colour of Death was beautiful.

The White Women were here now, whispering Rosaline's name, but Violante spoke loudly for the Silver Queen to hear her over their murmuring. "I lied when I said you were nothing without your son. The truth is, there is no King without a Queen to rule him. He is just a baby, and without you, who will possibly protect him? I want you to draw your last breath, and know that you are defeated."

With one last effort, the Silver Queen closed her hand around the blade embedded in her heart, and pulled. The bloody dagger clattered to the floor.

Rosaline's eyes clouded, and the White Women vanished.

Death had done his work.

Violante let Rosaline's body drop from arms, and roll onto the floor. In the corner, the baby wailed dismally, the only challenger to her claim.

Slowly, disbelievingly, all the guards in the room kneeled. The Black Prince, ripping the gag from his mouth, kneeled. Even Jacopo kneeled.

"I am the Queen." Violante said. "I am the Queen of Argenta. I have triumphed."

* * *

**My A-Levels have finally finished, yay, so I'll be able to post the last few chapters now. Hoped you enjoyed this chapter :)!**


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